Assessments And Anticipations

ASSESSMENTS AND
ANTICIPATIONS

BY

WILLIAM RALPH INGE, c.v.o., d.d., f.b.a.

Dean of Si Paul’s

CASSELL AND COMPANY LIMITED,
London, Toronto, Melbourne an^ ^Sydney.

Firbt Published
Second Impmsion

J uuun , ig-sy
I< (.bunny, iyj<>

Printed in Great Britain

CONTENTS

PERSONAL

uttPTm p\gf

1 EARLY RECOLLECTIONS - 9

2 LATER RECOLLECTIONS 24

RELIGIOUS

3 LABELS AND LIBELS 40

4 THE FOOLISHNESS OF PREACHING - 67

5 THE PRAYER BOOK , THE FIRST

REJECTION ----- 73

6 THE PRAYER BOOK ; THE SECOND

REJECTION ----- 80

7 FAITH ------ 87

8 HOPE ------ 94

9 IS THERE A COMMON CHRISTIANITY ? - IOI

10 CHANGING RELIGION - - - - 108

11 THE MID-DAY DEMON - - - Il6

POLITICAL

12 LIBERALISM - - - - - 1 24

13 CONSERVATISM - - - - - I3I

14 SOCIALISM - - - - I38

CONTENTS

PROGNOSTICATIONS

CHAPTER

15 1.

INTRODUCTORY -

-

146

16

II.

THE FUTURE OF CATHOLICISM

-

153

17

III.

THE FUTURE OF PROTESTANTISM

-

161

18

IV.

EDUCATION IN 2,000 A.D.

-

169

*9

V.

THE GREAT POWERS IN A.D. 2,000

177

20

VI.

SOCIAL LIFE IN THE NEXT IOO

YEARS -

i8 5

21

VII.

THE FUTURE OF MARRIAGE

-

*93

22

VIII.

THE FAILURE OF DEMOCRACY

-

201

23

IX.

SCIENTIFIC MORALITY

-

209

24

X.

THE SHRINKING GLOBE

-

217

25

THE

NEXT WAR -

-

225

SOCIAL

26

WHAT IS SUCCESS ? -

-

2 33

27

IN - THE LIMELIGHT -

-

247

28

THE

INFERIORITY COMPLEX

-

2 53

29

WORK -

-

261

3 °

EPICURUS AND HIS CRITICS

-

269

3 i’

STOLEN EPIGRAMS -

-

277

PREFACE

For permission to reprint those parts of this little
book which have already appeared, I have to thank
the Editors of the Evening Standard , the Strand
Magazine , the Spectator , and Nash’’ s Magazine.

W. R. INGE.

Deanery, St Paul’s,
October, 1928.

ASSESSMENTS AND
ANTICIPATIONS

I. EARLY RECOLLECTIONS

T RAVELLERS between York and Northal-
lerton may notice, as the train dashes past
the little station of Alne, a wooded hill rising out
of the plain a few miles off, with a castle and a
church on the top. This is Crayke, where I was
born on June 6th, i860. It is a beautiful village,
and the view from the Wishing Gate, which has
been the recipient of many youthful confidences,
is something not to be forgotten. Before us lies
the great plain of York, looking as flat as the ocean,
the skyline broken only by the massive pile of
York Minster, twelve miles off, which rides the
plain like a stately ship. On the right is the bold
outline of the Hambledon Hills, with a great white
ht>rse, always kept carefully scoured. Behind us is
the hilly country beyond Yearsley. An outlying

9

]$£ ASSESSMENTS AND A N TI C I P VTI O N S ^

spur of Crayke Hill is the clump called Oliver’s
Mount, named, as my mother told me with indig-
nation, after the wicked man who beheaded the
Royal Martyr. Crayke was at that time very much
cut off from the world. There was then no branch
line to Easingwold, and my grandfather ahva) s
drove into York behind a pair of fat horses, which
covered the distance in about two hours. There
was still, I think, a lingering feeling that railway
travelling was a dangerous innovation ; we were
taught to say our prayers with extra care before
embarking on a journey by train. Such excitements
were few and far between.

My grandfather, Edward Churton, Archdeacon
of Cleveland, and for forty years rector of Crayke,
was an old-fashioned scholar and divine, author of
“ The Early English Church,” then the best popular
book on the subject ; of “ The Cleveland Psaltei,”
a metrical version of the Psalms ; of two volumes of
poems, and of a learned work on the Spanish poet
Gongora, which-, is still quoted with respect by
students of Spanish. He lived mainly in his
library, well stocked with folios of theology,
including all the verbose Fathers of the Church,
and all the Anglo-Catholic divines from the
Laudians to Pusey. He had been a friend of the
leading Tractarians, and a visit of Manning to the

IQ

EARLY RECOLLECTIONS

Rectory was remembered. It was a life very unlike
that of a modern_ Archdeacon, but he whs much
respected ; the Church in those days was more
learned and thoughtful, and less nervously active,
than it is now.

His only daughter married my father in 1859.
William Inge, who belonged to the younger branch
of an old Staffordshire family, was a Fellow of his
College and had been the fast bowler in the Oxford
Eleven, a very handsome man with an athletic
frame, and nt> fault except excessive diffidence.
He came to Crayke as tutor to the Archdeacon’s
sons, three of whom won scholarships at Eton, and
the fourth was nominated to the foundation at
Charterhouse. My father was shortly afterwards
ordained, and served as curate at Crayke, refusing
preferment, till the Archdeacon died in 1874;
after which ,he held a living in Staffordshire till he
was appointed Provost of Worcester College,
Oxford, in 1881, and soon afterwards was offered
the bishopric of Salisbury. This last honour so
shocked his modesty that he refused by Teturn of
post, without even telling his wife. He died at
Oxford in 1903, leaving a well-deserved reputation
for sound judgment (where his own merits were not
concerned) and a saintly character.

We had hardly any neighbours at Crayke. The

1 1

ASSESSMENTS AND a. N 'I I C I P A T I O N S ^

neighbouring squires were some of them rather' like
Sir Pitt ^Crawley, and the family at Alnc were our
only close friends among the clergy. It was an
isolated existence, such as can hardly be imagined
in these days. My parents had abundant leisure,
which they devoted to educating their children, and
both of them had a genius for teaching. Much of
our instruction was given by reading aloud, while
we “ did copy-drawing.” Somehow, we managed to
attend to both, and in this way we were introduced
at a very early age to Shakespeare, Spenser,
Tennyson, Sir Walter Scott, and several books of
history. The excellence of my father’s classical
teaching may be judged from the successes of the
young Churtons, and from my own position as
second on the list of Eton scholais after only three
months at a preparatory school. We had indeed
an admirable education, such as no children get in
these days. All our work was made thoroughly
interesting, and in the paper-games which were our
delight we composed short stories and poems at
top speed — the best possible training for examin-
ations. Cousins of our own age were taught with
us ; one of them is now a Fellow and Tutor at
Oxford. I once inadvertently locked him up in the
rabbit-hutch when I went in to lunch. For outdoor
games we had cricket with the village boys, and I

12

EARLY RECOLLECTIONS

remember watching with tremenda'us excitement a
match between an Eleven of professionals and
Twenty-two of Easingwold and district, a form of
cricket which was then very popular. The Twenty-
two tumbled over each other in the field, about three
of them colliding painfully when a catch went up ;
their innings was a melancholy procession of
victims, some of whom were severely knocked about
before the redoubtable George Freeman shattered
their stumps. Only one of them got into double
figures. The village club was a good one, but the
score-book shows that rustic wickets did not suit
Oxford Blues. It was a bitter disappointment when
a promise to take me to the Canterbury Week had
to be withdrawn. That was the occasion when,
if I remember light, W. G. Grace got nought and
two hundred and sixty-eight in one match, nought
and two hundred and seventeen in the other.
J. C. Shaw, or Alfred Shaw, I forget which, was
responsible for both the duck’s eggs.

Sunday was a mitigated Puritan Sabbath. The
only amusing book we were allowed to read was one
by Neale on the Christian Martyrs, whose ingenious
tortures gave us great pleasure. But we were
allowed to play a few games, only not the same that
we played on week-days.

On one side our training was certainly peculiar

13

^ ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

My mother was not only a “ Puseyite,” as the
Anglo-Catholics were then called, but a Jacobite,
and a Tory of a far deeper blue than The Morning
Post. The summaries of English reigns which we
learned by heart were composed, I believe, by my
grandfather. William IV “ Was too good-natured
to the Whigs and Radicals, and gave his consent to
what was called the Reform Bill, which wants
reformation.” Our governess struck at this, and so
fixed it indelibly in my mind. A history of England
informed us that “ the established 'religion is the
Episcopal Protestant, but all other religions are
tolerated.” I gathered that I was to express dis-
approval not only of the word Protestant but of the
principle of toleration, which I did with a vigoui
that even my mother thought excessive. My father,
like every serious Englishman in his generation,
read through the Parliamentary debates with vener-
ation. A member of Parliament was a magnificent
being, surpassed in majesty only by a bishop. Any-
one who can remember the ’seventies will recall the
amazing respect paid to these two dignities. My
parents abhorred Gladstone’s politics, but could not
forget that he was a “ good Churchman,” which
could hardly be said of Disraeli, though on a cele-
brated occasion he declared himself on the side of
the angels.

H

EARLY RECOLLECTIONS

The high Churchmanship of those days would
hardly be recognised as such now. Ecclesiastical
millinery was totally neglected ; I do not think
that my grandfather ever wore a cassock. On the
other hand, there was no hesitation in calling
dissenters heretics, or schismatics, or both. The
Church of England was the only religious body that
had a right to exist. There was a small Wesleyan
chapel in the village ; but half the Methodists came
to church once on Sundays, and all, I think, were
married and buried by the rector. The stiffer
Churchmanship of the next generation drove all
such pious waverers into unmitigated Nonconform-
ity. I well remember the church harmonium, but
I was too late for the barrel-organ which once
refused to stop, and was carried out playing the
Old Hundredth down the churchyard.

On another occasion, while my father was preach-
ing, the church door was thrown open, and a red
face appeared at the entrance. “ If you please,
Mr. Inge,” said the voice, “ can you lend us your
squutt,” (garden hose) ; “ there’s a rick on fire.”

The mental troubles of a nervous child were not
so well understood then as they are now. I had
a terrible fright when I was three or four years old,
frpm suddenly seeing the distorted reflection of my
face at the bottom of a sink. For many years after-

15

ASSESSMENT S AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

wards I could not bear to look at myself in the glass,
for fear, of seeing some such horror as had once
terrified me. Long after I was' grown up I was
conscious of a wish to shut my eyes while passing a
mir ror. The psycho-analysts, in spite of much
unpleasant nonsense, have done good service in
calling attention to these “ phobias,” the result of
early frights. How common they are it is impossible
to say.

I was nearly fourteen when I went for one term
to a preparatory school. When I. went to say
good-bye to my grandfather, the good old man took
leave of me in the lines from Shakespeare :

“ If we do meet again, why, we shall smile ,

If not, why then this parting was well made ”

We did not meet again. He died a few days be-
fore I went in for my Eton examination.

I was fortunate enough to be at Eton during the
height of its wonderful successes in classical scholar-
ship. Not even Shrewsbury under Kennedy had a
more brilliant record at Cambridge than Eton under
Hornby in the ten years of which I speak. In six
years out of eight the best scholar of the year was an
Etonian ; in one of the other two years our best
man went to Oxford. The system in the upper part
of the School was peculiar to Eton. The compulsory

work was very light, but the classical tutors, of

16

EARLY RECOLLECTIONS

whom I was lucky enough to have the best, Mr.
F. St. J. Thackeray, a cousin of the novelist, gave
extra help to the cleverer boys, and encouraged
them to work by themselves. The competition
was intense, especially in the months before the
examination for the Newcastle Scholarship, the blue
ribbon of Eton. The untired brains and unspoiled
eyes of eighteen can work for ten or eleven hours a
day, absorbing knowledge like a sponge. We sat
up till the small hours with a shaded candle (for
4 ‘ lighting-up ” 'was against rules), and were none
the worse for it. We did not know ourselves how hot
the pace was till we went to the University, and as
for our doings there, are they not written in the
chronicles of the Cambridge University Calendar ?

Whether the classical course, as pursued at
Eton and Cambridge forty or fifty years ago, was
really a very, good education, I have my doubts.
It was not cram. We read in masses, and we read
the original authors, not modern books about them.
We had to use our brains, for the apparatus of
notes and cribs was not nearly so complete as it is
now. Composition in Greek and Latin prose and
verse was by no means waste of time. It compelled
us to study the classical authors with an eye to their
litejary beauties, as models for us to imitate ; and
it compelled us to understand the English authors

17

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

whom we had to translate into Latin or Greek,
which is not such a simple mattei as some maA
think.. But it did not bioaden the mind. We were
not encouraged to think that life has problems to
solve ; theie was hardly any essay-writing, and
hardly the rudiments of philosophy or scientific
history. The subsequent careers of our most
brilliant scholars have been a little disappointing.
Several of them have become bishops ; but these,
though excellent men and capable administrators,
will leave no mark upon the thought of their time.

There was, indeed, a group of boys of a diffcient
type. If we had been asked to choose the two
among our contemporaries who were most likely to
be distinguished men, we should probably have
named J. K. Stephen and H. C. Goodhart. Both,
unfortunately, died young, but not before justifying
the high opinion of their school-felloys. Sir Cecil
Spring-Rice, our Ambassador at Washington,
belonged to this group ; but the only quite first-
class reputation made by the Collegers of my time
was that of Lord Parker of Waddington, one of the
greatest judges of our day. Some of us naturally
returned to Eton as masters, a career which does
not lead to public honours, but which has satisfied
some of the best and ablest men whom I h*tve
known. Such, among the men of mv “ election,”

18

EARLY RECOLLECTIONS

are the present Vice-Provost of Eton and the present
Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge ; and
such was the late H. F. W. Tatham, who headed
the list in 1874, when I was second, and who lost his
life in the Alps. It must always be remembered,
in considering the relation of scholarly distinction
to success in life, that a large proportion of scholars
will choose to make learning their profession. The
Muses have neither fame nor fortune in their gift ;
but their votaries may think that they can bestow
what is better than either.

It must not be thought that Eton Collegers were
indifferent to the prevailing cult of athletics.
They prided themselves on both playing and work-
ing harder than the rest of the school, and there
was one year when they were more than willing to
play the rest of the school at football — at the
cs Field ” game. I was very fond of cricket, but
never got farther than the College Eleven.

My undergraduate life at Cambridge was too
much like my life at Eton, a continuation of the
same kind of work, which ought to have been
changed for something less like schoolboy reading —
intense application when an important examination
was near, and the same games. After the first part
of ihe Classical Tripos I specialised in ancient

*Mr A C. Benson has died since this article was written

19

jg- ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS

history, and this was the year that I enjoyed most.
I have often thought that if I could begin again I
should choose to be a historian. What I should
have made of it, neither I nor anyone else will ever
know, but the subject fascinated me then, and has
done so ever since.

My holidays, till 1881, were passed mainly at
Alrewas, a straggling, difficult, and rather unattract-
ive parish on the banks of the Trent, of which my
father was vicar till he went to Oxford. My
parents were so busy that they seldom met except
at meals, where parochial shop was discussed ad
nausaem, and the parishioners usually came to see
my father at meal-times, because they were sure of
finding him in. If I had ever wished to become a
parish priest, the experience of these holidays
dispelled any such desire.

It was not till rather later that 1 became inter-
ested in theology, and unhappily for my parents
I could not return to the Anglo-Catholicism which
was so near to their hearts. My father took my
heresies philosophically ; but my mother could not
forgive my defection, and I fear never did entirely
forgive me. There was more than a trace of the
attitude of Monica to Augustine when he dabbled in
the errors of the Manichasans. These family
divisions, due to differences in leligion, are very

20

EARLY RECOLLECTIONS

distressing ; it will be remembered that Christ
clearly predicted that this would be one of the
results of His coming. The author of Ecce* Homo
and Matthew Arnold were among the prophets of
that generation. They, are in part antiquated,
but I am not ashamed of having been influenced
by them. “ Honest doubt 55 and all the attitude
which those words suggest are now laughed at by
some who are dogmatists without ceasing to be
sceptics. There was a moral earnestness about the
theological Liberalism of the ’eighties which we
cannot always observe in the breezy cocksureness
of the returned Army chaplain. But I had at that
time no thought of becoming a clergyman ; I was
twenty-eight before I applied for deacon’s orders,
and thirty-two before I proceeded to the priesthood.

It is a strange thing to cast one’s eyes back upon
the past. It* is a mist-covered tract, with peaks
rising here and there above the clouds. The earliest
recollections are among the clearest; but after-
experience has deeply coloured even those things
which we remember best ; we unconsciously alter
the past every time we rethink or retell it. We put
down to wisdom and foresight what was merely
luck ; we think we aimed at what merely fell into
our lap. We think we are miserable at one time and
happy at another , but it is certain that, as a wise

21

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

Frenchman has said, we are never either so happy or
so unhappy as we suppose. Dull care, says Horace,
sits behind the horseman ; but we generally forget
that he is there. And our happy years were years
when, as we regretfully confess when they are gone,
we did not know how well off we were.

The wise man does not grudge the time spent in
keeping his memories green. How much love and
care were lavished upon us when we were thought-
less children, accumulating debts which we can
never repay and which we can only acknowledge by
passing on some of what we owe to our parents to
our children ! I have several cases full of my
mother’s letters, beautifully written and full of the
wistful anxiety of a good woman for her son. The
art of letter-writing has fallen on evil days ; few
of us have time for it, or we think we have not time.
And the younger generation seldom -keeps letters.
But they are a part of our past lives, and, if we are
wise, we shall lose no opportunity of linking our days
together, as Wordsworth says, by natural piety.
There is a real danger in this hurrying and irrever-
ent age that the bonds which unite past and present
may be snapped, that the traditions which make
our national life one and continuous may be lost,
and that so we may forfeit part of our heritage as
actors in a moving pageant which began long ago,

EARLY RECOLLECTIONS

which has been, in spite of all defects, worthy of
love and admiration, but the end of which is uncert-
ain and unknown. Those only can care intelligently
for the future of England to whom her past is dear.

23

2. L.VTER RECOLLECTIONS

I T has been suggested to me that I might add a
continuation of my “ Early Recollections,”
dealing with my professional life. No biography
of me shall ever be written, if I can prevent it.
In these short reminiscences I shall say as little as
may be about myself.

Eton , i 884-1 888

There are some places which have such an

undefinable charm that those who have lived in

*

them, even if they have not been very happy at the
time, think of them with a loyalty and affection
which never fades, and of which they cannot give
any prosaic explanation. Such places are our two
ancient English universities, and several of our great
public schools. The charm of Oxford and Cam-
bridge, of Eton and Winchester, is felt even by the
casual visitor. It may be that the creation of this
love and loyalty is no small part of the benefit which

24

LATER RECOLLECTIONS

a boy derives from his public school education, for
it is a pure and disinterested emotion, and it keeps
his memory green for the spring-time of life.. We
imbibe it almost unconsciously. I remember at an
Eton Founder’s Day banquet how a distinguished
Old Etonian made a most tactless speech, saying
that as far as he knew Eton had done nothing for
him. Dr. Hornby, who was never at a loss for a
happy phrase, replied : “Of course he does not
know. That is the beauty of Eton.” Most old
Etonians do nbt know exactly what Eton did for
them ; but they are ready to give credit to their
school for the less regrettable incidents in their
careers.

I have said elsewhere that I have never known an
abler set of men than the best of the Eton masters
in my time. It is a very exacting profession,
demanding scholarship, power of discipline, tact,
knowledge of the world, and (for a house master)
the gifts of a hotel-keeper. The system, at any rate
before Dr. Warre became headmaster, seemed to
have been devised to get the maximum of work out
of the masters with the minimum of inconvenience
to the boys. The staff saw no outside society,
except visiting parents ; for nine months of the
yegr they were as hard worked as a barrister o.r
doctor in large practice. Yet several of them were

25

’gj* ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS *§£

highly cultivated men, of wide reading and many
interests.

The. boys were individuall}' charming, but the
teaching was made unnecessarily difficult. The
majority of the boys did not come from very
intellectual homes, and the parents had no great
faith in the value of the classical training which the
school purported to give. There was still a privi-
leged class in England before the war, and privilege
does not tend to industry or efficiency. The “ divi-
sions ” (school classes) were too larg'e ; I once had
thirty-eight boys in my division. Every experi-
enced schoolmaster will agree that each boy bevond
the number of thirty increases the difficulty both
of teaching and of keeping order. The divisions
were not homogeneous ; a master might have in
his class clever boys who had been moved up, and
very stupid or idle boys who had been kept down.
Above all, the system of teaching the classics, at
Eton, as elsewhere, was fatuous. About twenty
lines of Greek or Latin, which the boys had already
construed with their tutors, had to be spread over
an hour, by dint of parsing and going over the
lesson twice. It was impossible to make such a
lesson anything but a weariness to master and boys
alike. The only way to make the classics interest-
ing is to read them in masses — in English if neces-

26

LATER RECOLLECTIONS

sary, commenting on the subject-matter and with-
out minute attention to grammar. In the war
between classics and the modern side, the Trojans
have beaten the Greeks because of the stupidity
with which the Greeks have defended the weakest
part of their line. It was perhaps a survival of the
old notion that learning should be made as distaste-
ful as possible to the scholar, in order to strengthen
his character. There is no conservative like your
educationist.

Oxford, 1889-1904

After four years of this uphill work, I decided .to
accept a fellowship and tutorship at Hertford
College, Oxford, where I remained for fifteen years.
Hitherto, though my father was Head of an Oxford
College, I had hardly known Oxford, except in the
vacations. The two Universities resemble each
other much more than either of them resembles any
other place in the world, but there are some
differences. Oxfoid was at that time already a
residential town ; the society at Cambridge was
more exclusively academical. The honour paid to
philosophy at Oxford and to mathematics at
Cambridge made a subtle difference in the stand-
point from which many questions were considered.

27

]gj- ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

Minute accuracy was almost a fetish at Cambridge ;
the respect given to commentatorship was, I cannot
help thinking, excessive. At Oxford, on the other
hand, men liked to refer particular questions back
to general principles, and attention to details may
occasionally have suffered. Such, at least, are
likely to be the rather impertinent first impressions
of a man who goes from one university to the
other.

The life in college rooms suited me. A man of
my temperament is much happier’ with a fixed
income, and becomes unreasonably worried if his
receipts fluctuate even slightly. Incomes at the
universities are small, but the expenses in college
rooms are still smaller, and there are no house-
keeping troubles whatever. The work is pleasant,
and the university terms so absurdly short that the
don has half the year to himself. Na conditions
could be more favourable for foreign travel, or for
independent research and literary work. The
society of the Senior Common Rooms is agreeable
and interesting, though in a college where most of
the Fellows are married there may be very few left
at the High Table, and too much specialising may at
times produce the conditions which dispersed the
builders of Babel.

For the first seven or eight years I was thoroughly
28

LATER RECOLL E C T IONS

happy. Then I began to feel restless, as I think
many other college tutors do, and to wish for a house
of my own. Life in college rooms tends to produce
the habits of a hermit crab ; it is too easy, and does
not enlarge a man’s experience. And before the
fifteen years were over I was conscious of beginning
to get stale, individualising each batch of pupils a
little less than their predecessors, and becoming
bored (and no wonder !) with my own lectures.
I am inclined to think that the profession of a don
is better for half a man’s working life than for the
whole.

All Saints’, Kmghtsbndge, 1905-1907

In the year 1905 two events happened which
sharply divided my life into two parts. One was
my marriage ; the other was my appointment by
Canon Henson, as Rector of St. Margaret’s, West-
minster, to the living of All Saints’, Ennismore
Gardens. The latter was almost as great a plunge
into the unknown as the former. Although I had
been Chaplain of my College, and Bampton
Lecturer, I had seen nothing of Church work, and
had had no parochial experience. Nor did I know
anything of life in London. But my parish was

quite unlike the ordinary parish. The district

29

jg- ASSESSMENTS 4ND ANTICIPATIONS

was quietly aristociatic ; there was a large pro-
portion of elderly people, some of them very
rich, and others with moderate incomes, but living
for the most part in houses of much the same size.
The middle-class element was hardly represented
at all ; but there were a few picturesque paupers,
pensioned by the church, and so well looked after by
the devout and honourable ladies, who could not
leave blankets and grapes on each other, that I
think they ought to have paid income tax.

I was fortunate enough to secure" two excellent
curates, one of whom had had some experience. The
most important part of my work was the Sunday
morning sermon, to which I was able to give my best.
It was not altogether easy to preach to a congre-
gation which included three of His Majesty’s judges
and several other very able men, and also a number
of churchgoers who wanted very simple spiritual
food. But on the whole I think I steered pretty
well between the two extremes.

I am glad to have seen something of London
society before the Great War. No one now living
will ever see again such abundance, cheapness, and
luxurious comfort as the prosperous classes in
England enjoyed in the years before the great
catastrophe broke upon us. I found the society
more interesting, because more varied, than that of

30

LATER RECOLLECTIONS

Oxford ; but I cannot help thinking that the
London ladies have now wider interests and a keener
intelligence than most of them showed in their
conversation twenty years ago. I think also that
social differences are less accentuated now than
they were then. No doubt there may be some
persons who are capable of smiling on a dean and
snubbing a vicar ; but I think there has been a real
change ; and at any rate it is pleasanter to be
received by a genial parlourmaid than by a super-
cilious butler.

The golden age of the West End incumbent was
definitely brought to an end by the war. I was
probably wise from a worldly point of view, though
I could not have foreseen it, to take the opportunity
of returning to academical work as Lady Margaret
Professor at Cambridge ; but both of us regretted
leaving London, where we had made many de-
lightful friends.

Cambridge , 1907-1911

No position in the world could have been more
congenial to me than the tenure of that ancient
professorial Chair, dignified by the names of many
great scholars who had held it before me. We had

3 1

jg- assessments and anticipations ^

a very good house, with a garden, a luxury I have
never enjoyed before or since. There was almost
unlimited time for study, and I looked forward to
spending the rest of my life in work upon the
philosophy of religion, especially on the develop-
ment of the Platonic tradition after the Christian
era. I had no expectation of another move, and
no desire for it.

There was only one disappointment. I had hoped
to put the best of my thoughts into my professorial
lectures, and to give a stimulus tro a branch of
theology which has always been more cultivated at
Oxford than at Cambridge. But I found, as I ought
to have anticipated, that the professors of divinity,
as teachers, were mainly occupied in instructing
young men who intended to take Holy Orders, and
that the majority of these were intellectually on a
far lower level than the classical Honours men whom
I had taught at Oxford. It was not possible to give
such lectures as I had contemplated. There were
always three or four students of a different calibre,
and I was able to give these a little help
privately.

My three and a half years as a professor at Cam-
bridge were among the happiest of my life.

32

LATER RECOLLECTIONS

St. Paul’s, 1911

It was a staggering surprise to me when I received
Mr. Asquith’s letter offering me the Deanery of
St. Paul’s. I had never sought for ecclesiastical
preferment, and had no suspicion that my name had
ever been considered for any of the great positions
in the Church of England. The choice was, I
believe, the Prime Minister’s own. Archbishop
Davidson, though he was always personally very
kind to me, distrusted men with the cross-bench
mind. He liked those who could be counted on to
keep step, and to support the government. Mr.
Asquith said it was his hope that I would revive the
old traditions of the Deanery of St. Paul’s as the
most literary appointment in the Church of
England. I was to remember Milman, Mansel, and
Church, and to try to justify my appointment by
taking a prominent part in the world of literature,
scholarship, and theology. This I have endeavoured
to do, to the best of my ability.

The position of a Dean in the Church of England is
very little understood in the outside world. It differs
widely in different Cathedrals ; in the later founda-
tions the Dean has more independent authority
than in the earlier. But in most cases his position is
very much like that of the Head of a Cambridge
College. (At Oxford, the Heads have a certain

33 3

’g- ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

amount of administrative work ; at Cambridge,
in most Colleges, very little.) The post is a very
trying one for an active man with ideas of his own.
When we lived in Staffordshire, Dean Bickersteth
of Lichfield used to call at our house, in order to
pour into my mother’s sympathetic ears the story
of his woes. Montagu Butler, who at Harrow had
long ruled six hundred boys and fifty masters with
an iron hand carefully wrapped in a velvet glove,
was more than once reduced to tears by his impo-
tence as Dean of Gloucester. Dean Wace of Canter-
bury, a hot-tempered man, used to storm out of
Chapter meetings breathing threatenings and
slaughter against his colleagues. There is probably
no Cathedral in which the Dean is more absolutely
powerless than at St. Paul’s. I soon discovered
that my position was that of a mouse, who if he
dares to poke his nose out of his hole, finds four
cats watching him, ready to pounce. I do not mean
to suggest that my relations with the Canons have
ever been strained. Indeed, as Cathedral Chapters
go, I think we have got on very well together.
But I would not recommend any man who enjoys
power, and likes to rule, to accept a Deanery, least
of all the Deanery of St. Paul’s, unless he sees his
way to make a full and active life for himself out-
side the Cathedral.

34

LATER RECOLLECTIONS

Such a position would be intolerable if the
administration, for which in the eyes of the world
the Dean is responsible, were unsatisfactory. . But
it has been my good fortune to find an unusual
degree of competence and loyalty in all the depart-
ments of the Cathedral service. Indeed, I have
never known a great machine run so smoothly, and
I hope I have shown no ingratitude in emphasising
the total absence of liberty which the statutes and
usages of the Cathedral impose on the titular Head
of the Chapter. I frankly admit that the work is
better done than it would be if I were personally
in control, and for this reason I have acquiesced in
the undignified role of a rot faineant.

My opportunities of making the acquaintance of
the leading men in Church and State — the heads of
the great professions, and those who have won fame
in literature, .art, science, and commerce, have
made my life in London intensely interesting. It is
often said that ours is not an age of great men ;
that we have a great deal of good second-rate
ability, but few or no outstanding figures on the
same level as the famous Victorians. To which
some of our younger men, like Mr. Lytton Strachey,
reply that the Victorians were not nearly so great
as their contemporaries supposed them to be. It is
difficult to decide. Hero-worship is easier when the

35

]jg ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS

stage is less crowded. A tall man looks like a giant
when he has only undersized, persons round him.
But I am inclined to think that the conditions of
modern life are not very favourable to the emerg-
ence of great genius. We have a large number of
very able men who just fall short of greatness. The
most original work seems to be done in science ;
but this is such a highly specialised form of ability
that its possessors do not always make a powerful
impression on those who meet them. In art and
literature the public taste fluctuates so much that
it is hard to predict what names will be held in
honour fifty years hence.

One of the pleasantest parts of my duties has been
the close connexion into which my position has
brought me with the successive occupants of the
Mansion House, with the great Livery Companies,
and with the merchants and tradesmen of the City
of London. This was an entirely new experience,
and no one can mix much with men of this type
without being struck by their ability, generosity,
and good sense. One of the worst mistakes made
by the parochial Clergy is to devote all their
attention to the poor, and to neglect the prosperous
business men and their families, as if they had no
•souls to be saved. We may learn as much from men
engaged in commerce as from any others, and I have

36

LtTER RECOLLECTIONS

always found them very friendly. Their muni-
ficence in supporting our Preservation Fund is
known to all.

The state of the Church of England, when seen at
close quarters, is not very encouraging. The
pronouncements of leading churchmen are seldom
illuminating; they tend to a sloppy and un-
practical socialism. The debates in the Church
Assemblies seem to transport one into a strange
unreal world, where important things are ignored
and unimportant magnified. The Church is
profoundly divided in opinion, and no juggling
with formulas, no exploits of “resolution English,”
can disguise differences which go down to
the roots of religious belief. It may be that after
long acquiescence in a purely opportunist policy,
men of strong convictions will demand that the
Church of England shall declare itself on matters of
principle. Catholics, Protestants, and Liberals may
find that they can no longer shelter under the same
umbrella. There may be another period of seces-
sions, expulsions, and disruption. In any case, I
cannot believe that the ministry of the Church will
continue to be shunned, as it is now, by men of
energy and ability. The notion that Christianity
has no longer an important part to play in human
affairs is, I believe, quite erroneous. We shall see

37

^ ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

some strange developments , but there will be
ample scope for men of the highest gifts in the
ecclesiastical life of the next generation. Person-
ally, I rest my hopes on a new Reformation on
Erasmian lines. A vast amount of lumber will
have to be cleared away. The Jewish survivals m
our public worship diffuse an atmosphere of unreal-
ity over the whole. The reversion to sacerdotalism
and magic can only purchase a temporary and dis-
creditable success at the price of ultimate disaster.
The Church must surrender the obvious advantages
which it might win by bribing, cajoling, frightening,
and bargaining with the irreligious. It must be
content to be severely Christian, making its appeal
only to the minority who “ love the Lord Jesus
Christ in uncorruptness.” All the rest is wood, hay,
stubble, which will be burnt up at the next con-
flagration.

Retrospect

In looking back over an active life which in the
course of nature must be nearly over, my deepest feel-
ing is intense thankfulness to the Providence which
as I believe with entire conviction, has taught me
from my youth up until now. My second is the
humiliating reflexion how much happier I should

38

Tfc later recollections £

have' been, especially in the early part of my
life, if I had laid to heart the precept of the
Sermon on the Mount : “ Be not anxious about the
morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the
things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil
thereof.” It is the troubles that never come which
prevent us from making the best of the real blessings
of life.

39

3. LABELS AND LIBELS

I N these days, when the value of esprit de
corps is everywhere extolled, when Church-
men congratulate themselves on the rediscovery of
“ the corporate idea,” when the lamented Professor
Royce writes a book to prove that the essence of
Christianity consists in “ loyalty to the beloved
community,” it is worth while to show the other side
of the shield. Loyalty finds itself in devotion to a
symbol of some kind, a name or a flag or a catch-
word, and it seldom thrives in the absence of some
other symbol, which is hated as much as our own
symbol is loved. If it would be going too far to say
that these labels are the invention of the enemy of
mankind, it is certain that he has used them to do
his most effective work, and to thwart most of the
good that the Christian revelation was meant to do
in the world. The spirit of partisanship, with all
the hatred, injustice, and cruelty which it evokes,
has dogged Christianity like Its shadow from the
very first, and has enabled its enemies to maintain
plausibly that it has brought more evil than good to

40

LABELS AND LIBELS

the human race. All other vices of human nature
have been diminished by Christianity ; this one it
seems actually to have increased. Even the imme-
diate disciples of Christ were conquered by it. They
wished to “ forbid ” one who cast out devils in the
name of Christ, but did not belong to His company ;
James and John would have liked to call down fire
from heaven upon a Samaritan village ; and,
according to an old legend, St. John rushed out of a
public bath when he saw the heretic Cerinthus
inside the building. This is the more extraordinary
because Christ Himself was more entirely free from
this spirit than any other religious leader who has
ever lived. He had a horror of labels ; He abolished
all man-made barriers by calmly ignoring them.
He cared nothing at all whether a man was a Jew
or a Samaritan or a Roman or a Greek ; He would
not hold Himself aloof even from those who followed
disreputable callings. He attached no importance
to professions of allegiance. “ Not every one that
saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the
kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of
my Father which is in heaven.” “ Ye shall know
them by their fruits.” “ Who are my mother and
my brethren ? They that do the will of God.”
So great was His fear of militant institutionalism,
that He founded no organisation, and recommended

4 1

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

only private prayer- The whole spirit of the Gospel
— the spirit of love, sympathy, wide tolerance, and
inwardness, is utteily opposed to the maxim extra
ecclesiam nulla salus. Whether He ever preached
beyond the territorial limits of orthodox Judaism or
not, in principle He threw down all barriers, and
St. Paul in no way went beyond the universalism of
the Gospel itself.

How then did it come about that the Christian
Church has been a religion of external classifi-
cations, of labels and anathemas and persecutions ?
It was mainly the Jewish tradition, the leaven of
the Pharisees. Juvenal, who knew the Jews,
though he did not know their Scriptures, supposed
that fanatical exclusiveness was a rule of the Law :

Tradidit arcano qnaecumque volumine Moses,
Non monstrare mas eadem nisi sana cole nit,
Quaesitum ad fontem solos deducere verpos.

But it was partly Roman, at least in its later
developments. If the Roman Church was de iure
co-extensive with the world, all who seceded from it
were rebels and traitors. The persecutions hard-
ened the organisation of the Church ; the military
discipline which was begun for self-preservation was
continued for dominion. The maxim of Caiaphas,

42

LABELS AND LIBELS

melius est ut unus pereat quam umtas, was ruthlessly
applied. No doubt there was also the dread,
handed down from primitive religion, that any
member of the community who by his acts or
opinions was displeasing to God, might bring pun-
ishment upon his tribe or nation ; and we must
allow for the mere instinct of pugnacity, which
makes even the lower animals set upon one of their
number who breaks loose from the herd. What-
ever shares we may allow to these different influ-
ences, the Church soon took the character of a
military monarchy with a hierarchic constitution,
external tests of membership, and fierce antipathy
to all who would not submit to them.

The greatest of the Church Fathers are quite
explicit in their exclusiveness. “ If anyone out of
Noah’s ark could escape the deluge,” says Cyprian,
“ he who is. out of the Church may also escape.”
Augustine says, to the same effect, “ No one can
have Christ for his head who is not in his body the
Church.” Fulgentius already declares that “ with-
out a shadow of doubt all Jews, heretics, and schism-
atics will go to eternal fire.” The only exceptions,
so far as I know, to this savage intolerance date from
times when the Church was still in danger of
persecution. Tertullian ( Ad Scapulam, 2), arrd
Lactantius ( Epitome Dw. Inst., 54) plead for

43

^ ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS

liberty of conscience. The words of Lactantius are
worth quoting : “ Religio sola ,est, in qua libertas
domicthum c olio c amt. Res est emm praeter ceteras
voluntana , nec unponi cuiquam necessitas potest ,
ut colat quod, non vult. Potest ahquis forsitan simu-
lare ; non potest veiled , But these sentiments were
quite forgotten when the Church could wield the
secular arm. Even the saintly St. Louis, when
asked by a knight what answer he should make to a
Jewish controversialist, replied : “ The best answer
that a layman can make to a contentious Jew is to
run his sword into him as far as it will go ! ” The
Catholic theory is exactly expressed by Macaulay.
“ I am in the right, and you are in the wrong. When
you are the stronger, you ought to tolerate me, for
it is your duty to tolerate tiuth. But when I am
the stronger, I shall persecute you, for it is my duty
to persecute error.” There was no, wavering in
this teaching till the Reformation, and the first
Reformers were not much better. “ Beyond the
bosom of the Church,” says Calvin, “ no remission
of sins is to be hoped for, nor any salvation.” The
Saxon, the Helvetic, the Belgic, the Scottish
Confessions all proclaim the same doctrine. The
Presbyterians, the Independents, the Anglicans
agreed. Zwingli alone pictured heaven as £< an
assembly of all the saintly, the heroic, the faithful,

44

LABELS AND LIBELS

and the virtuous,” where one may hope to meet
Socrates, Aristides, find the Scipios and the Catos.
Luther despaired of the salvation of Zwingli, when
he read these words.

I wish to emphasise that this exclusiveness is
the logical result of believing in labels. If God
tickets human beings according to the societies of
which they are “ adherents ” (the expression is
most appropriate !) or the opinions which they
profess, and if their eternal destiny is decided in
this crude mechanical manner, it is obviously a
work of charity to “ compel them to come in,”
even if compulsion involves the burning of their
material bodies. Catholicism is committed to this
theory, and must always persecute whenever it is
possible to do so. Leo X. condemned, among the
errors of Luther, the proposition “ Haereticos
combun est contra voluntatem Spmtus and the
Syllabus of 1864 condemns the statement that
“ Ecclesia vim inferendi potestaiem non habet. ,>
In 1898, at Irapuato in Mexico, a Protestant girl
was dragged to the public square and threatened
with burning.

The other consequences of the theory are not less
disastrous. It makes it impossible to speak of God
as just or merciful, unless we use these words in a
different sense from that which they bear when we

45

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

use them of our fellow-creatures. John Stuart
Mill’s protest on this subject is. well known. The
doctiine of exclusive salvation, as Lecky says,
blots out those fundamental notions of right and
wrong which the Creator has engraven upon every
heart ; it extinguishes the lamp) of conscience ;
it teaches men to stifle the inner voice as a lying
witness. What kind of love for God, and what
respect for His justice, can survive in the mind of
a mother who believes that her infant, who died
suddenly before she could have it baptized, is now
in hell ? Again, no other passion is so fatal to the
pursuit of truth as fanatical partisanship. Wher-
ever it exists, whether it takes the form of religious
intolerance or ferocious patriotism, there is an
atrophy of science, learning, and all the humane
arts. Thirdly, by associating the conditions of
salvation with institutional loyalty, or correct
belief, the foundations of morality are under-
mined. It has been said that there are two things
which the average sensual man is willing to do for
religion — to perform certain ritual observances,
and to fight. This is not exactly the religion of the
Gospels. Of the cruelty to which this theory logically
leads something has been said already. The Spanish
Inquisition alone burnt over 30,000 persons ;

and to read the precis of a trial by torture before

46

LABELS AND LIBELS

that tribunal (there are examples in Lea’s History
of the Inquisition) is to receive an impression of
horror which nothing can ever efface. At this time,
when a keen interest has been aroused in the fate
of Justinian’s great Church of the Holy Wisdom,
it is instructive to remember the fate which befell
that glorious building at the hands of Western
Catholics in the Fourth Crusade. When the
Latins turned aside from the conquest of Palestine
and fell upon Constantinople, they placed an aband-
oned woman upon the Cathedral throne, and pro-
faned the Holy Eucharist in a horrible manner.
What else they did may be described in the words
of the Novgorod chronicler : “ They broke down

the place of the priests ornamented with silver,
the twelve silver columns of the Holy Table ;
they destroyed the screen, walls, and altar, and the
twelve crosses which stood out of the altar like
trees higher than a man. All these were of silver,
and they carried off the wonderful table with the
gems and the great pearl. They snatched away
forty cups standing on the altar, and the candelabra
which were too numerous to be counted. They stole
the Gospels used for the service, and the cover over
the altar and forty censers of pure gold. They laid
hands on all the gold and silver and priceless,
vessels in the church.” And yet the Greeks were

47

^ ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS *§£

not even heretics. Tantum religio potutt suadere
malorutn.

The price which has to be paid for organised and
military efficiency in religion is much too high.
And it rests on a lie. God does not judge us by the
labels which we wear on our coats, but by the love
and the justice which we cherish in our hearts.

The history of Europe since the Reformation has
been, for religious bigotry, a history of decline and
waning power. It is only in backward countries
that religious persecution, in its old violent form,
is conceivable. The last example was the judicial
murder of Francesco Ferrer at Barcelona, and this
crime sent a thrill of indignation through the whole
world. The doctrine of exclusive salvation is so
contrary to experience that it requires a seminary
education to make it credible, in spite of the declar-
ations of the Popes that all non-Catholics are out-
side the sphere of divine grace, and “ under the
wrath of God.” And though seminaries still
exist and flourish, it is impossible to rear a crop of
exotics by keeping the gardeners in hothouses,
while the young plants are in the open air.

But the demon of labels and libels has not been
exorcised. It has only been driven to operate in
another channel. Catholicism, while it added
continually fresh fuel to the flames of religious

48

LABELS AND LIBELS

intolerance, imposed some restraint upon national
and racial hatred. The only internecine wars,
during the great power of the Church, were religious
wars. But as the authority of the Church declined,
national and racial self-consciousness increased.
We no longer abhor or despise those who worship
God under different roofs from ourselves. We even
feel that respect is due to any honest conviction.
So Carlyle blamed Voltaire for treating the religion
of his day with contempt. “ It is a much more serious
ground of offence that he intermeddled in religion
without being himself religious ; that he entered
the Temple and continued there with a levity which
in any Temple where men can worship beseems no
brother man.” This is not quite fair. Voltaire
had a generous abhorrence of cruelty and bigotry,
and attacked them with his own weapons. But
such bitterness is no longer necessary. Laymen
are inclined to smile at the verbal missiles, such as
Schism, Heresy, Erastianism, Latitudinarianism,
which ecclesiastics still fling at each other. But
how different is our attitude towards a people of a
different race, or even only of a different political
allegiance ! It is difficult to say whether ignorance
of other nations, or personal contact with them,
excites our animosity most. Pepys describes how
the Russian and Spanish ambassadors were mobbed

49 4

jg ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

in London, not because we had any quarrel with the
nations or governments whom they repiesented, but
only because Russians and Spaniards are very unlike
Englishmen. The most absurd stories about the
manners and customs of our neighbours find cred-
ence. The Englishman used to believe that the
Frenchman subsisted mainly on frogs, and the
Frenchman that the sale of wives at Smithfield was
one of our national institutions. At the great
exhibition of 1851, a member of Parliament
expressed his horror at the prospect of inviting
profligate Frenchmen to enter our innocent homes.
On the other hand, when races are very diverse,
familiarity breeds dislike. The Anglo-Indian official
may go out to India intending to make friends with
the natives, but his sympathies seem generally to
cool down after a few years. An Englishman
visiting the Southern States of the American
Republic learns to keep his mouth shut about the
negro question, but he is surprised and shocked by
what he sees and hears. Yet Booker Washington
would not allow us to use a self-righteous tone about
our treatment of the negro. “ You should go to
South Africa,” he said. The truth seems to be that
races of very different types should keep apart.
If there is miscegenation, as in the Spanish and
Portuguese colonies, the superior race is degraded ;

50

LABELS AND LIBELS

if there is none, there is a record of abominable
cruelty and oppression. Sometimes, no doubt,
race-hatred is mixed with economic motives. . We
in Great Britain have no dislike of the Jews, because
we can take care of ourselves against them. The
Aberdonians take such good care of themselves that
no Jews can live in their town. Yet in many parts
of the world the old religious hatred against the
Jews seems to survive, plainly because it masks a
very different ground of dislike. That unhappy
people, debarred for centuries from other means of
earning their livelihood, were driven to usury and
then hated for it. The combination of religious and
racial prejudice, reinforced by economic causes,
produced one of the most disgraceful chapters in the
history of mankind. The economic motive is even
more apparent in the dislike of Europeans to the
peoples of the Ear East. Here there is no physical
aversion, such as some feel for the black and even
the brown races , the Japanese, at any rate, are
attractive in appearance, and their women are
often beautiful. Nor can any one not blinded by
prejudice speak of racial inferiority in the case of
these nations. A distinguished ethnologist told me
that some of the largest brains that he had measured
belonged to Japanese ; and in some branches of
art and mechanical skill both they and the Chinese

5 1

Jg ASSESSMENTS 4.ND ANTICIPATIONS

are unquestionably our superiors. Yet because they
are heirs of a different civilization, and because they
possess certain virtues which we do not wish to
acquire, and which mav become very inconvenient
to ourselves, we treat them with habitual injustice
and occasionally with diabolical cruelty. When the
allied troops were marching on Pekin during the
Boxer rising, the Chinese girls, who had heard some-
thing of the manners of European soldiers, drowned
themselves by scores to escape falling into the hands
of the Christians. So potent is the labelling habit
to extinguish all sentiments of humanity. We may
find out some day that Asiatics have long memories.

The notion that some nations or races are intrin-
sically superior to others has produced a great deal
of false science and bad philosophy. The Geimans
have evolved a theory about the supeiiority of the
Teutonic or Nordic stock, to which .they suppose
themselves to belong, though in reality the common
broad-headed German type points to a descent
from what ethnologists call the Alpine race, which
moved westward from central Asia. They even
try to make out that all the great men of history,
with a few exceptions, have been of German origin.
They wall not allow the Jews to keep the Founder of
Christianity, nor the Italians Dante; and Shake-
speare must have been a German. The French like

52

LABELS AND LIBELS

to expatiate on national characters’. England, for
example, is the country of will. These labels seem
to me as worthless as religious labels. Our ancestors
in the Middle Ages struck foreign observers as an
easy-going, pleasure-loving people. The qualities
for which foreigners give us credit, or discredit, are
mainly the result of our geographical position, our
limited territory, and our coal and iron fields. The
French, who have the reputation of being volatile
and artistic, are as tenacious and as fond of making
money as any nation on earth. The Italians, whom
their neighbours fancy basking picturesquely in the
sun, never sit in the sun if they can help it, and are
the hardest workmen in Europe. Mr. Bernard Shaw
has argued plausibly that the Irishman is a more
practical person than the Englishman. The whole
literature of national characteristics seems to me to
be worth very little. I have heard that the Jewish
soldiers in our army were so much annoyed by
the unkind suggestion that their motto was probably
“ No advance without security,” that it was
impossible to hold them back.

It is of course in war-time that this labelling of
other nations ceases to be a scientific error and
becomes a delirious mania. There are thousands
of people in the allied countries who honestly believe
that every man who has had the misfortune to be

53

^ ASSESSMENTS iNI) ANTICIPATIONS ^

born between the Rhine and the Vistula has a double
dose of oiiginal sin. It is curious to reflect that
until Napoleon trampled on the Germans, and made
the iron enter into their souls, where it has remained
ever since, their great thinkers were less infected
with exclusive nationalism than the leaders of
thought in any other country. This is certainly
true of Kant and Goethe. Goethe avowed that the
sentiment of patriotism was unintelligible to him,
and that national hatred is always strongest in
peoples at the lowest level of Kultur. But unfortu-
nately this great nation has furnished the strongest
example in modern history of the pernicious effects
of educating a people in the way in which it should
not go. Just as the Roman Chuich, whenever it
gets the control of education, imbues the minds of
the young with an indelible taint of fierce bigotry,
so the German government, holding in its grip the
whole course of national training, from the infant
school to the university, has sedulously inculcated
that evil kind of patriotism which consists largely
of hatred and contempt for other nations. Already
in 1836 Quinet speaks of German national antipathy
as something unique and horrible. Taillandier in
1840 speaks of the “ fever of hate ” against France
which he found at Heidelberg. The French soon
after began to speak of teutomsme to indicate boast-

54

LABELS AND LIBELS

ful and bitter nationalism. Nor ‘is the German
hatred against England anything new. Baroness de
Bunsen (as Mr. A. D. McClaren quotes in the
Hibbert Journal !) wrote in 1859 : “ The fact of
power and preponderance alone, without the exist-
ence of injuries to resent, is shown to be quite suffi-
cient ground for the unsparing national hatred
entertained by the great proportion of Germans
(whether Protestant or Romanist) against Eng-
land.” A veritable gospel of malignity was
taught everywhere, with every encouragement from
above, so that even in Treitschke’s lifetime no one
could gainsay the complacent dictum of that
historian : “ We are the greatest haters in the

world.” The famous Hymn of Hate by Lissauer,
which our soldiers amazed the Germans by singing
as a comic song in the trenches, was not at all comic
to them ; it .was meant in deadly earnest. But it
is surely significant that the temperature of German
hatred was lowered in proportion as it percolated
from the official fountain-head down to the masses.
Among the official class, and especially the Uni-
versity professors, it was at white heat ; among the
social democrats of the great towns it could hardly
be said to exist. This is an indication that though
it was unquestionably real, it was largely artificial,
and not a deep-rooted peculiarity of the German

55

Jg ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

temperament. All governments at war try to
stimulate hatred, and are not very scrupulous how
they do it. It is one of the most detestable parts of
war that it is considered necessary to distort the
judgment and to inflame the passions of one’s own
countrymen. Germany, with her usual thorough-
ness, had begun to store up this spiritual poison
gas, along with her material munitions, many years
in advance. The name of Heine may be added to
those who have regarded rancorous brooding
hatred as ingrained in the German nature. But I
do not think that this is good science.

The English are perhaps the least vindictive
people in Europe. This is partly because we tend
to be individualists, and do not readily make either
ourselves or other groups the impersonation of some
quality which we admire or hate ; and partly
because we habitually think in texms of sport, and
the object of the sportsman is never simply to win ;
he likes a good opponent, and bears no malice if he
is fairly beaten. English hatred, which gradually
became furious enough, was roused almost entirely
by the baseness of German methods. The cad is the
one sinner for whom in England there is no forgive-
ness. Never before in our history have we felt
towards an enemy as we have done in this war,
because never before have we fought against an

56

LABELS AND LIBELS

%

jyr

3t

enemy who seemed destitute of chivalry. But we shall
soon remember that “ Germany ” is an abstraction,
and in a very few years we shall feel the absurdity
of treating every individual German as if he was
personally responsible for sinking the Lusitania.
We are as much misled by labels as other nations ;
but our labels are usually like the light and
dark blue caps at a cricket-match ; they stimulate
rivalry, but not hatred. Our partisanships are
often silly, but seldom insane. Our long political
experience in trying to govern ourselves may have
helped to produce this result ; and there seems to
the Englishman to be something contemptible in
animosity against an opponent ; it is unsportsman-
like and — bad business. It is significant that we
have never yet made an implacable enemy, and that
no coalition has ever been formed against us.

It is plain that what we are dealing with in this
discussion is the ingrained instinct of pugnacity,
which flows into whatever mould is ready to receive
it. When our chief interest was in organised
religion, and when the idea of a universal Church,
the spiritual continuation of the Roman Empire,
filled men’s minds, partisanship and combativeness
took the form of religious exclusiveness and perse-
cution. When the idea of nationality came to the
front, the civilised man became an over-ardent

57

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

patriot. If happier circumstances, such as the
absence of menacing rivals, permit this instinct to
take a gentler form, it works itself out in sport, in
party politics or sectarian zeal. An American can
never make an Englishman understand that it
matters much whether the Republicans or the
Democrats are in power, any more than we can
understand the subtle theological nuances of the
Scottish Churches ; but there is as much excite-
ment over an American Presidential election as if
the most vital principles were at stake. We must
take human nature as it is, with all its absurdities,
and try to divert them into comparatively harmless
channels. Games are the best safety-valve for the
spirit of mere pugnacity ; they effect what Aristotle
calls a purgation of the emotions, a kind of vaccin-
ation against the real disease. Politics perform the
same office for older men ; but they are apt to
become too serious, when one side begins to plunder
the other ; and the politician as a rule is not such
an honest fellow as the professional cricketer and
baseball player. In matters which are really
important, we must eschew labels as a snare of the
devil. F or example, in j udging of a man’s character,
it is not fair to sum him up as a gambler, or a miser,
or a wine-bibber. He may be what we call him ;
but he is many other things besides ; the label is

58

LABELS AND LIBELS

not descriptive of the man, but only of one corner
of him. This is the -only valid objection to capital
punishment. You cannot execute a murderer
without hanging with the same rope half a dozen
other men who do not deserve to be hanged. And
in joining a party, we must consider very carefully
how far names correspond with realities. The devil
frequently captures the organisations which were
formed to defeat him, and uses them for his own
purposes. The Church no sooner triumphed than it
brought back nearly all those corruptions of religion,
to destroy which Christ suffered himself to be nailed
to the Cross. If the Roman officials could have seen
the Church of the Middle Ages, they would not have
cared to persecute the Christians, nor would the
martyrs have cared, perhaps, to go to the stake.
When Carnot introduced conscription into France
to save the revolution, he did not see that he was
making the Napoleonic empire inevitable, still less
that Napoleonism would come to life again a hun-
dred years later on the other side of the Rhine.
Religious sects gradually lose their raison d’etre as
time goes on, because most people remain in the
denomination in which they were born, though
their cast of mind should have drawn them to some
other type of religion. A large and broad Church
like the Church of England contains specimens of

59

Jg ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS -4^

every kind of religion, from Ultramontan'es to
Quakers, and only a few slip off -to find their natural
friends. The same is true of the great non-Christian
religions. A study of such books as Professor
Reischauer’s Japanese Buddhism convinces the
reader that every form of religious philosophy, and
every variety of cult and dogma, with which we are
familiar in the history of Christianity, has its
parallel in the development of Japanese thought and
practice. We have nothing new to teach them,
except our Western names and terminology. The
history of Buddhism is indeed extraordinarily
instructive to any one who wishes to understand the
movements within Christianity from the second
century to the present day.

It may be objected that this line of thought has a
disintegrating and paralysing effect upon those who
would like to devote their lives to the -propagation of
some good cause. But I am not arguing that there
are no real cleavages, and no real battles to fight.
Nor am I suggesting that we ought to be mere
individualists, making our own way to the heavenly
city like Christian in Bunyan’s allegory. My
contention is that the enthusiastic institutionalism
which is now so often urged upon us cuts us off from
‘many who ought to be our friends and allies, and
unites us to many who ought to be in the opposite

60

LABELS AND LIBELS

camp.- It is because the battle is real and serious
that it is important that we should know our friends.
The enemy is secularism, if we must find one word
for the creed of human society as it organises itself
apart from God. The New Testament calls it the
world ; but secularism is a less ambiguous name.
It stands for a more or less coherent view of life,
which is fundamentally antagonistic to the Gospel of
Christ. It involves a gross over-valuation of the
good things of this life, money, comfort, sensual
indulgence, and “ambition ; and it is deliberately
blind to the whole glorious vision of a world behind
the veil. For those who believe in an eternal
spiritual world, in which we have our true home, the
whole perspective is radically altered ; nothing re-
mains the same. This is the real cleavage ; and it
obviously cuts across all external and mechanical
classifications,, such as those which divide men into
Catholics and Protestants, Englishmen, Americans,
and Germans. The war has for the time accentuated
some of these barrier-lines, but it has thrown down
or obliterated others ; and it has brought us all into
touch with hard facts, with facts at their very hard-
est. The opportunity is now offered to make an end
of misleading labels, and to reorganise our forces
according to their true affinities. The cause of
reunion among all “ who love our Lord Jesus Christ

61

'SS* ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS dsf

in incorruptness ” will be advanced more by intelli-
gent sympathy than by diplomatic negotiations
between the leaders of denominations. We want to
recognise that these barriers have been already in
principle abolished by Christ Himself. He did not
(in spite of the Vulgate and Authorised Version)
promise that all his disciples should be gathered
into “ one fold ” ; but He did promise that they
should be one flock, with one Shepherd. Partisan-
ship and pugnacity have never succeeded in wholly
dividing Christians. We use each other’s hymns and
devotional books; the liteiaturc of mj sticism is
strangely independent of time, country, and creed.
We work together in scholarship, in moral reform,
and in philanthropy. And in the chambers where
good men pray, Christendom has never been
divided. The nearer we are to God, the nearer we
come to our brethren, both those that, we know and
those that we know not. It is far better that
sympathy and understanding should come first,
than that political alliances should be formed be-
tween Christian bodies which do not understand
each other. It is unhappily true that one great
body, the Roman Catholic Church, is so committed
to the principle of exclusiveness that it cannot,
without discarding its fundamental policy, main-
tained unbroken for fifteen hundred years, recognise

62

LABELS AND LIBELS

other Christians as brethren. Romanism is the
Prussianism of religion ; and at present no way out
of this impasse can be found. But the Orthodox
Eastern Church is far less uncompromising. Within
the last few years we have welcomed at St. Paul’s
the Archbishop of Belgrade, the Archbishop of
Nicosia in Cyprus, and the Archbishop of Athens.
These ecclesiastics have walked in our processions
with the Cathedral clergy, and they have taken part
in our services. The Cyprian Archbishop gave the
benediction in Grfeek by my invitation at the end
of one of our Sunday services ; and a Serbian
priest, the well-known Father Nicolai, delivered a
sermon from our pulpit, being the first preacher,
not in Anglican Orders, to occupy that position.
The movement for the interchange of pulpits is still
resisted by the official representatives of the Church
of England ; but it cannot long be prevented, for
the law is being broken in every part of the country,
and the congregations approve. Friendly inter-
course outside places of worship, between different
religious bodies, is uninterrupted ; and to know
one another is to respect one another. The chap-
lains returning from the front, whose opinions are
listened to with great attention, are for the most
part strong reunionists. They have lived in sur-
roundings where the absurdity of stiff denomin-

63

jjg ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS «§£

ationalism is too patent to be denied. And at home,
the war has sifted the wheat from the chaff. The
unselfish, devoted war-worker, in public offices,
in hospitals, in canteens, in factories, has shown his
or her mettle, and the shirker has been found out
too. All have seen how little outward professions
of belief have to do with character. “ Not every
one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord ” — we all know
now how true these words are.

The tide is flowing towards reunion among all who
do not make a principle and a policy of exclusiveness
and monopoly. But the cult of labels is still an
obstacle : it is difficult to resist the waving of flags
and the repetition of catchwords. It is a Vulgar and
unchristian habit. A Christian ought to go through
life in the spirit of a worshipper, always looking out
for manifestations of the divine wisdom, goodness,
and beauty in the world. And assuredly he will not
expect to find these tokens only or mainly in
external nature. “ The Spirit of man is the throne
of the Godhead,” as Macarius says ; or, in the more
tender words of another early Christian writer,
“ When thou seest thy brother thou seest thy
Lord.” Those who strive after this temper will
rejoice in finding points of agreement rather than
points of difference ; they will try to establish

relations of sympathy with all who are in any way

64

LABELS AND LIBELS

entitled to respect ; they will recognise that they
may have something to learn from men who have
had a different upbringing, and who have been
taught to view the world from a different angle ;
and if they believe that they themselves have some-
thing to teach, they will not think to commend
their message by showing dislike, anger, or contempt
to those whom they wish to influence. They will
soon find that much of controversy is a mere
juggling with counters ; that there is no vital
difference betwe'en the ideas which the shibboleths
of party attempt to express. Even if there are
intellectual disagreements — and there can be no
progress without a healthy competition of opinions
— intellectual disagreements seldom generate heat
unless there are very unintellectual prejudices
behind them. Theologians and scholars, it is true,
“ see red ” wi^en they are confronted with a heresy,
and quite forget the harmless individual, a man
probably very like themselves, whom they identify
with his outrageous opinions ; but these are the
foibles of the student, dehumanised for the time
being by his abstract researches. No sensible man
wishes to carry these rather absurd passions out-
side the library and lecture room. For all of us,
whatever our calling, and whatever the nature of our-
interests, there is no wiser motto than this : Person-

65 5

ASSESS ME NTS 4.ND ANTICIPATIONS

alise your sympathies, and depersonalise, your
antipathies. This is the only way to christianise
the spirit of partisanship, one of the most pestilent
parts of our inheritance from a very remote past.

* * * *

[This article was written ten years ago, and
bears a few traces of war-mentality. But as a
whole I think it is not out of date.]

66

4- THE FOOLISHNESS
OF PREACHING

T HE Archbishop of Canterbury has exhorted
the clergy to take more pains with their
sermons. The result, as might have been ex-
pected, has been that the chronic dissatisfaction
of churchgoers and others with the spiritual and
intellectual food provided for them on Sundays has
become more vocal than usual, and that many
clergymen have protested that their critics do not
seem to realise the difficulties with which they have
to contend.

The standard of preaching in the Church of
England is certainly low. Not only is the average
sermon uninspiring, but there is a dearth of out-
standing preachers whose reputations can be com-
pared with those of Liddon, Magee, Phillips Brooks,
and Farrar. The few preachers who can still fill
any church are men who for one reason or another
are in the public eye ; they are not great pulpit

67

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS

orators, but they are known to have the courage
of their opinions, and to say what they think.
Most of the preaching in Anglican churches is
unworkmanlike and even slovenly, if we judge it as
we should judge other professional work. Our
preachers do not study the art of hortatory elo-
quence as the Nonconformist ministers do, nor do
they as a rule put so much thought into their
discourses as the Scottish Presbyterians, from
whom theii people demand stronger meat than
would be acceptable to most English congrega-
tions.

For this deficiency there arc several causes.
The Anglo-Catholic clergy, with some notable
exceptions, disparage preaching. It is, in their
opinion, a Protestant error to regard the sermon as
the most important part of the service. Some of
them seem hardly to prepare their sermons, relying
perhaps on the piomise given to the Apostles that
“ it shall be given you in that hour what ye shall
speak.” This kind of inspiration, however, does
not seem to follow necessarily from the possession
of the Apostolic Succession. It is also a Catholic
principle that the priest is to give the authorised
teaching of the Church, not his own opinions. But
in these days, if people listen to sermons at all, they

want the first-hand convictions of the preacher.

08

3fc the

FOOLISHNESS

OF

PREACHING ^

A sentence beginning “ The Church teaches,” or
“ The Bible says,’ ? leaves them cold.

The tendency to neglect and disparage preaching
is doubtless connected with the inferior intellectual
quality and the absence of proper training among
the younger clergy. It requires no brains to be a
purveyor of sacerdotal magic, and this conception
of the ministerial office is unfortunately growing.
These young men adopt a very dictatorial tone in
the pulpit, which repels their hearers, many of whom
are far better educated than themselves.

Want of time is often pleaded as the excuse for
poor serjnons. It is a plea which cannot be
accepted, for we can all make time to do our main
work, whatever we think it to be. If a clergyman
really has no time to prepare his sermons, the
probable cause is the inordinate multiplication of
church services, which cater only for the spiritual
luxuries of a mere handful of people, while the mass
of actual or potential churchgoers suffers. A real
and deplorable obstacle is the extreme poverty of
the clergy, which makes it impossible for them to
collect a library, and the isolation from all stimu-
lating and intellectual companionship in which
many of them are forced to live. This last, however,
is partially remedied by clerical discussion societies,

which exist in all parts of the country, and to which

69

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS *§[

Nonconformist ministers are often invited. But the
want of books is a grievous deprivation, which must
have bad effects on preaching.

The crumbling of certain parts of the dogmatic
structure has undoubtedly increased the difficulty of
preaching. There is much uncertainty as to what
may be, and should be, said from the pulpit. The
people themselves are impatient with dogma.
Accordingly, many preachers try to interest their
congregation by topical discussions of newspaper
controversies, new books, or, worst of all, burning
economic problems, in which their ill-formed
tirades generate much more heat than light. There
seems to be a kind of fatality that the Church always
begins to champion a political party at the moment
when it is preparing to abuse its power. The Church
never goes into politics without coming out badly
smirched, and few sermons are more unprofitable
than rambling comments or declamations on current
controversies.

It may be asked whether the pulpit any longer
exercises a useful function in modern life. Oral
teaching is necessary for the illiterate ; but we are
a reading people, and nothing can be more futile
than to try to fill rows of narrow-necked vessels by
throwing a bucketful of water over them. To which
it may be answered that we are not really a reading

7 °

Jg TH E FOOLISHNESS OF PREACHING ^

people, and that, especially in the country, the
sermon might be made the one opportunity during
the week of giving the parishioners something to
think about outside the daily routine of their lives.
There is still a very large number of people who can
pick up readily what they hear, but who have never
learned to concentrate their attention on a printed
page.

One of the greatest difficulties which the preacher
has to meet arises from the very different educational
levels of his hearers. It is almost impossible to
interest highly educated men and women without
becoming^ unintelligible to many persons in the
Church. And the problem becomes acute when we
are asked to assist the young and thoughtful men
and women in the congregation in their intellectual
difficulties about the Christian faith. We cannot
even come to. grips with these difficulties without
shocking and offending those of our hearers who are
neither young nor thoughtful. There is no solution
of this problem ; when the laity complain of the
disingenuousness of the clergy in shirking the
questions which are exercising the minds of the
younger generation, they seldom realise the shackles
in which they are held, not by the bishops, but by
another type of laymen.

The golden age of the pulpit is over ; but it is

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

a great mistake to despise preaching, or to suppose
that in this art, unlike all others, personal goodness
will compensate for the want of careful training and
diligent application.

7a

5- THE PRAYER BOOK:

THE FIRST REJECTION
DECEMBER, I 9 2 7

I T is very natural that after a great and un-
expected rebuff. Churchmen are simmering
with indignation against the House of Commons.
The freeborn Englishman hotly resents a Govern-
ment veto upon his claim to manage his own affairs.
I am sorry that the Deposited Book has been
rejected. But when our hotheads are beginning to
clamour for disestablishment, I think the time has
come to state .certain obvious facts which loyalty
forbade us to utter while the fate of the Book was
in the balance. They may serve to mitigate our
indignation, and help us to view the situation more
calmly.

(1) The large majority of churchgoers did not
want a new Prayer Book, and will shed no tears at
being deprived of it. The churchgoer is the most
conservative of men.

(2) The majority of the clergy supported it

73

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

mainly out of loyalty to the Bishops, and without
enthusiasm. It is also said that in some dioceses
rather severe pressure was put upon them.

(3) When some supporters of the Deposited
Book declared that the doctrinal balance of the
Church of England was undisturbed by it, they said
what was manifestly contrary to the fact.

(4) When the Bishops promised to enforce the
law as amended, they gave the impression of
contemplating more drastic measures than, appar-
ently, they really meant to attempt. They did not
intend to deprive any clergyman, even if he
persisted in introducing the whole Roman ritual
and teaching into his Church. But it is mis-
leading to talk about enforcing a law, to the
infringement of which no penalty is attached.

There has therefore been an element of unreality
about the whole business, and this r the House of
Commons knew well. To say that the will of the
entire Church has been contemptuously flouted by
the elected Chamber, after a few hours’ debate, is
by no means an accurate statement of what has
happened.

It was undoubtedly the question of Reservation
which wrecked the Book. Those who voted against
it saw clearly that if Reservation is admitted at all,
it is almost impossible to restrict the use of it to

74

THE PRAYER BOOK

certain- specified purposes. And, to speak frankly,
they had no confidence that all the Bishops would
even try to prevent the restrictions from being
overstepped.

I have always thought, and now I feel sure, that
two things have been mixed together, which ought
to have been kept apart. These two are the non-
controversial improvements in the Book of Common
Prayer, and the question of ecclesiastical discipline.
There was no reason why the former should not
have been proceeded with and brought to a con-
clusion, without arousing a fierce struggle between
the Catholic and the Protestant elements in the
Church. A vast amount of solid and valuable work
on non-controversial lines has for the moment been
made unavailable because partisan ambitions and
rivalries have invaded the field and have occupied
nearly the whole of it. In just the same way,
beneficent educational legislation was wrecked in
the last generation by the rival fanaticisms of
Church and Chapel.

Surely the Bishops ought to have seen that some-
thing of the kind was likely to happen, unless they
excluded from debate the Holy Communion service
after the Nicene Creed. They might well have said
that they were pledged not to admit doctrinal-
changes, and that in consequence they had agreed

75

Jg ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS

to veto any a'mendments in that part of the Book.
The decision would have disappointed those who
wished to use the Revision for purposes other than
those for which it was intended. These might have
succeeded in upsetting the scheme altogether, but
only by avowing that their policy was to prevent
all non-controversial improvements until their own
controversial claims had been conceded. Even a
defeat of the Book in the Assembly would have been
better than what has occurred. But the Bishops
greatly undei-estimated the strength of Protestant
conviction ; one of them even indulged in gibes
against the Evangelical party. They hoped to
divide the Anglo-Catholic extremists by conceding
half of what they asked for, and appealing to their
own authority to foibid, but not to punish, further
disobedience.

It had already been made plain, before the rejec-
tion of the Deposited Book, that this plan was
doomed to failure. Between one and two thousand
priests pledged themselves to defy the new regu-
lations before they became law. The passing or
rejection of the new Book makes very little differ-
ence to this section. Their sympathies and loyalties
are Latin, not Anglican. They will obey “ Catholic
tradition,” as interpreted by themselves ; they will
not obey their Bishops. The concessions made to

76

THE PRAYER BOOK

them in the Deposited Book they take without
gratitude, as a sign of weakness ; and can we say that
they are wrong in so thinking ? We were glad to hear
that some moderate High Churchmen had promised
to come into line with the bishops by discontinuing
one or two illegal ceremonies , but this does not
touch the case of the numerous rebels. What is to
be done with those who will persist in reading Mass
in Latin, in teaching transubstantiation and invo-
cation of saints, and, in a word, in completely
Romanising their Church services ? Are they to be
allowed to remain in the Church of England, or are
they to be prosecuted and ejected ?

It may be said, this has nothing to do with the
new Prayer Book. It has not ; but it has been
mixed up with the new Prayer Book, and it was the
Bishops who held out the prospects of better discip-
line in the Church as the chief reason for accepting
the Book. The rej ection of the Book has saved them
from having to admit an almost total failure to
redeem their promises.

It is easy to say : Satisfy the loyal High Church-
men, but turn the Latin Catholics out neck and

crop. That is a tempting policy ; and yet !

Mr. Birrell, a detached critic of Church matters,
writing some thirty years ago, enumerates four
“ Purges ” in our Church history, which expelled

77

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS Ǥ(

in turn the Papists, the Laudians, the Noncpnform-
ists at the Restoration and the Non-jurors. What
was the result ? “ How absurd to grumble at the

Hoadlys and Watsons, the Hurds and the War-
burtons ! They were all that was left. Faith and
fervour, primitive piety, Puritan zeal. Catholic
devotion — each in turn had been cast out. . . .
Since then, there has been a revival of faith and
fervour in the Church of England, so much so, that
Purge Number Five may shortly be expected.”
The limits of tolerance are indeed difficult to lay
down. The Bishops have an appallingly difficult
problem to solve, and few, 1 think, would covet a
share in such a responsibility. But I repeat that a
common-sense revision of the Prayer Book might
have been carried if it had not been entangled with
disciplinary questions which have nothing to do
with it.

* # * #

I have now, while coriecting the proof of the
above article, seen the declaration of the two
Archbishops (December 22nd). The Book is to be
presented to Parliament again. In my opinion, the
opposition is not likely to decrease unless the coun-
try is convinced that the Bishops have the will and

78

THE PRAYER BOOK

the power to stop flagrant illegalities in the Rome-
ward direction. At present, this confidence does
not exist. If the Bishops need more coercive powers
than they possess, they ought to ask for them. But
the public thinks that they are afraid.

79

6. THE PRAYER BOOK:

THE SECOND REJECTION
MAY, I928

I HAVE added nothing to the torrent of
controversial correspondence about the New
Prayer Book. I have supported the Bishops by my
vote in the Assembly, and I think the House of
Commons made a mistake in rejecting the book a
second time.

When Parliament passed the Enabling Act it was
clearly intended to give a considerable measure of
autonomy to the Church, and it would be difficult
to argue that these limits were overstepped in
drawing up a revised Book of Services. At the same
time, Churchmen ought to be thankful that the
legislature does not regard the conduct of Anglican
public worship as a merely “ domestic concern ” of
a single sect or denomination. Such debates as
those of last December and last week would have
been unthinkable in any foreign parliament ; they

at least prove that ours is still a Christian country,

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THE PRAYER BOOK

and that the laity think that the National Church is
a national concern. It is better that the House of
Commons should make a mistake than that its
members should shrug their shoulders and say :
“ These sectarian squabbles are no business of
ours.”

But though I supported the Book, I think the
Bishops made its rejection inevitable by allowing
controversial changes in the Communion office.
They had more or less pledged themselves not to
alter the doctrinahbalance of the Church of England,
and they ought to have seen that the only way to
fulfil that pledge was to exclude the latter half of
the Communion office from the scope of revision.
They might, I suppose, have done this by announc-
ing beforehand that they would veto any changes in
this part of the Book. When I asked leading
Churchmen why this had not been done, the answer
was always that the Anglo-Catholics would in that
case have prevented the Book from passing.
In other words, -this party was prepared to block
uncontroversial changes except at the price of
tilting the doctrinal balance in favour of their own
faction.

If this is true, the Bishops ought to have realised
that they were treading on dangerous ground. They
allowed two separate objects to be mixed together —

8l 6

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS

the introduction of common-sense improvements in
our services and the restoration of order and
discipline. They have needlessly sacrificed the
former in a very half-hearted attempt to secure the
latter.

They did not dare to ask for fresh powers to
deprive contumacious law-breakers, knowing that
this policy would disrupt the Church. They
flattered themselves that they could put down
burglary by legalising petty larceny ; and when
asked what they meant to do to those who con-
tinued to burgle, they had no clear answer to give.
In consequence, the uncontroversial improvements,
which were numerous and valuable, were forgotten,
and the public behaved as if the issue had been
raised of Catholicism versus Protestantism. This
was very unreasonable, but the Bishops ought to
have foreseen that it would happen.

The effective opposition came from the ultra-
Protestant side. The majority of the High Church
party, and nearly all the Liberal Churchmen, were
willing to accept the Book. The strength of the
opposition lay not among the Liberal Evangelicals,
most of whom supported the Bishops, but among
those who in America are called Fundamentalists,
the Diehards of a school which was powerful half a
century ago, but which is now in an intellectual

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THE PRAYER BOOK

backwater. My friend the Bishop of 'Durham gave
vent to some impatient gibes at the want of intelli-
gence shown by this faction, and in doing so he
unintentionally gave offence to the Evangelical
party as a whole, who cannot justly be accused of
stupidity. But the necessity for distinguishing
between the old and the new Protestantism throws
light on one of the most important changes in the
religion of the English people.

The real trend of religion among the younger
generation is away from dogmatic and institutional
Christianity, and towards an individual and personal
faith resting not on authority but on experience.
This movement has weakened all ecclesiastical
bodies which are exposed to it. It is quite natural
that this decline should be most apparent in those
sections of believers who are most in touch with
modern influences. Protestantism, with its reliance
on private judgment, is institutionally weaker than
Catholicism, which enforces personal submission and
exercises an almost military discipline. Protestant
dogmatism has crumbled, and its authority has
almost disappeared. Catholicism can make a much
better show in resisting the storm, though it remains
rooted in mediaevalism, and is progressively more
and more estranged from all that is most vital in
modern ideas.

»3

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

The choice 'before us is whethei to revert to a
religion of authority, which is certainly imposing in
its effectiveness, but which, as we see on the Contin-
ent, stands over against the State as an imp er turn
m impeno , and over against modern civilisation as a
determined enemy ; or to develop Protestantism
into what it is potentially, but has never yet been
actually, the expression of a Christian civilisation
on its spiritual side.

The new Protestantism is not relativist in the
objects of its faith ; it believes that truth is
absolute, and that God is unchanging. But it
accepts the necessity of growth and change in our
beliefs. It holds that revelation is constant and
progressive, and that all new knowledge has a bear-
ing upon religion and morality. We are not bound
to accept the latest scientific theories as necessarily
true , if we did, we should soon be, in difficulties ;
for science itself is in the melting-pot :

“ We thought that lines weie stiaight and Euclid true.

God said, ‘ Let Einstein be ’ — and all’s askew ! ”

But we must sit very loose to tradition, and keep
our minds open. Our anchor is what used to be
called the testimony of the Holy Spirit, which
assures us of the reality and primacy of those

eternal values which Christ came to reveal. This is

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THE PRAYER BOOK

the true Christianity, and we need not be discour-
aged about its prospects of victory if we look for
them in the fruits of the Spirit, and not in institu-
tional statistics or successes of organisation.

In fact, I think that our ultra-Piotestant friends,
who wrecked the new Prayer Book, are apt to
exaggerate the danger from Catholicism, whether of
the Roman or Anglican type. This kind of religion
is strong in team-work and party management. It
always looks more formidable than it is. Again
and again it seems to have victory within its grasp,
and then the people wake up and declare with the
utmost eipphasis that they will have none of it.
Hardly anything is more unlikely than that the
British nation will go back to the superstitions and
the servitude from which they emancipated them-
selves four hundred years ago. The clock cannot be
put back in this fashion.

Meanwhile, we shall combat the tendencies which
we deplore most effectively, not by trying to expel
from the Church what might prove to be a large
body of men and women, but by offering something
better in place of the Latin Church of the Middle
Ages. The recrudescence of mediaevalism is a sign
not so much of its own strength as of our temporary
weakness.

The Church of England is called by Providence to

85

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

a much nobler task than to undo the work of the
Reformation. The work of the Reformation still
awaits completion, and I believe that our Church
and Nation may complete it.

86

7- FAITH

T HE word Adventure is in the air just now,
especially in relation to religion. It gives a
title to the last book of Essays edited by Canon
Streeter. We are exhorted to “ live dangerously,”
as Nietzsche bade us. “ Safety first ” is all very
well when we are preparing to cross a street or
board an omnibus ; but in the great quest we
must be prepared to run risks. I wish to consider
in what sense this is true.

What is faith ? A schoolboy defined it as
“ Believing what you know to be untrue,” which
sounds like a caricature of a too well-known sen-
tence — seldom correctly quoted — from Tertullian.
Frederick Myers distinguishes between the bastard
faith of theologians, which consists in believing
something on insufficient evidence, and the right
idea of faith, as the resolution to stand or fall by
the noblest hypothesis. This definition is not very
different from the familiar words of the Epistle to
the Hebrews, that faith is confidence in the truth of

87

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

what we hope for, conviction of the reality of the
unseen. (That is probably near the meaning of a
difficult passage.)

Protestant theology has restiicted the meaning
of Faith too much — explaining it as subjective
assurance or trust. It has sometimes been assumed
that this attitude of throwing oneself into the arms
of Divine grace may dispense us from the duty of
forming rational convictions, and of directing our
lives in accordance with them. Faith and fact come
to be divorced. Either they are supposed to be
directed to different objects, or we are told that the
same proposition may be true for faith and false
for science — in which case we are on a quicksand,
and are driven to play fast and loose with
veracity.

The soundest teaching about Faith is to be found
in a quite early Christian writer — Clement of
Alexandria, about 200 a.d. He divides the Christian
pilgrim’s progress into three stages, of which the
first and last are simple, the second complex. The
first stage is faith, the second knowledge, and the
third love. Faith is an act of rational choice which
determines to act as if certain things were true, in
the confident expectation that they will prove to
be true. The upward path begins as an experiment,
and ends as an experience. The venture of faith is

88

progressively justified as we understand life better,
till at last knowledge passes into love, “ which
unites the knower with the known . 55 Thus faith is
the first step, knowledge the second, and love the
third.

Let us consider the problem from a more modern
point of view, with some help from Mr. Macmurray
in Canon Streeter’s book.

Faith, in the Gospels, does not mean believing
something : it is an inherent quality in the mind.
It is a kind of courage ; an attitude which favours
adventure and is not afraid to run risks. Its
opposite is not intellectual scepticism, but worry,
cowardice, or despair. It can remove mountains —
not literal mountains, but the obstacles which sloth
and cowardice have put in our path. “ Who does
the utmost that he can will whiles do mair . 55

Now I think.it may be said that the modern world
is in a better position to understand what Christ
meant by faith than the ages that went before us.
Faith is a decision of the will, a sort of a wager in
which we decide to trust life to justify our best
hopes. It is not the attitude of a mere onlooker.
“ In this world , 55 said Francis Bacon, “ God only
and the angels may be spectators . 55 Faith implies
something to be done as well as something to be

believed. It brings Imagination into play — imagin-

89

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

ation, which for the ancients was an idle play of
fancy, but which for Wordsworth “ is reason in her
most exalted mood.” Like Coleridge, Wordsworth
distinguishes between imagination and fancy.
Fancy is an idle thing ; imagination is closely allied
to reason and practice. So allied, it becomes
creative ; when it ceases to be creative it turns
inwards, and becomes neurotic and unwholesome.
Faith is a vision which always prompts to appropri-
ate action ; if it fails to do this it soon retreats into
dreamland, and vanishes away.

We shall make a great mistake if we overlook the
part which the creative imagination, which is
faith, plays in all noble endeavour, such, for
example, as scientific discovery. Men like Darwin
are possessed with the idea of a great principle
which will explain the way in which nature behaves.
They work as if it w r ere true and they find that
nature also behaves as if it were true.

This is exactly the way in which religious faith
proceeds, and in both cases it is the method of
adventure. Some religious people, no doubt, run
away from life, in order to escape danger. They
fly to the most dogmatic and positive religion, as a
timid mariner will seek any port during a storm.
Their motto is “ Safety first,” and in consequence

they learn nothing. He who experiences nothing

90

is made no wiser by solitude ; lie who shuns
temptation is made no stronger to resist it.

Until quite modern times, there was little or no
faith in human history as having any meaning.
We were sent into the world to save our own souls
and to help other people to save theirs. But there
was so little belief in the life of the race as having
any meaning or value, that if God chose to “ shatter
to bits the whole sorry scheme of things entire ” the
day after to-morrow, that would be a quite satis-
factory end to the whole business.

This way of thinking about the world has
vanished . entirely from the minds of educated
people. We are now taught that the earth is some-
thing like two thousand million years old ; that
human beings, recognisable as such, have probably
been in existence a million years at least, and that
there is no known reason why our tenancy of the
planet should not be prolonged for a million years
more, which will give our social reformers plenty of
time to try every conceivable experiment.

Besides this, we believe that all movements are
gradual. They are not necessarily upward move-
ments, nor does it follow that greater complexity
implies greater value or greater happiness. But
it seems quite clear that whether we call the world
good or evil, it is in our power to make it better.

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Jh ASSESSMENTS \ND ANTICIPATIONS

Time, for us, instead of ha\ ing no value or meaning
at all, is charged with tremendous possibilities foi
good and for evil.

Here we have a new task foi faith, a task without
which faith was necessarily half crippled. “ See
that thou make all things according to the pattern
showed thee in the mount.” These are our marching
orders, which before the age of science were very
little attended to.

We are not to suppose that life in this world will
go on for ever All the tools and instruments,
the stage and scenery, -which the Cieator has
provided for the performance of His great drama
will be scrapped when the play is done. That will
not matter. “ Though the earthly house of this
tabernacle be dissolved, we have a house not made
with hands, eternal in the heavens.” But these
transcendent hopes will hardly remain ours unless
they act as creative forces in the world in which
we live — that world which has been well called
“ the vale of soul-making.”

Now all these “ acts of faith ” in the eternal world
require courage and the willingness to take risks.
I am no radical ; but the kind of conservatism
which proceeds from mere timidity is not to be
commended. It is a curious reflection that as the

average age of the population increases year by

92

year, tjie influence of cautious grey-beards may
possibly become too strong. However, the flapper
vote will not tend in this direction , and possibly
the younger generation, who have left school since
the War, are less inclined to play for safety than
their parents were.

Faith is a spiritual venture, and does not imply
an optimistic view of present tendencies. But those
writers who have emphasised the buoyancy and
courage of the genuinely Christian character have
done good service*.

93

8. norn

I F we want to understand what new ideas and
convictions Christianity introduced into the
world when it was fresh from the mint, we cannot
do better than to study carefully the new words
which the first Christians were obliged to use.

People do not coin new words to express old ideas.
We find in the New Testament a whole list of moral
virtues which had no place, or a different place, in
non-Christian literature. Such words are love, joy,
peace, faith, hope and humility. These words
belong to Christianity, and are characteristic of it,
as liberty, equality and fraternity belonged to the
French Revolution, or as justice, temperance,
prudence, and fortitude were the cardinal virtues
of paganism.

It would be worth while to collect all that the
New Testament says about these new virtues, and
to think out for ourselves what they mean and how
they are related to each other. When we know
what these words meant to the early Christians we

shall know what Christianity stood for when it
first confronted the world.

It never entered the minds of the Greeks and
Romans to make Hope a moral virtue. They
regarded it as a gift of doubtful value, an illusion
which helps us to endure life and a spur to action,
but on the whole a will-of-the-wisp. So in the last
century Schopenhauer taught that it is the bait
by which Nature gets her hook in our nose, and
makes us serve her interests, which are not our
own.

St. Paul, as we all know, makes Faith, Hope, and
Love the cardinal virtues of Christianity. This was
an entirely original triad, though the later pagan
Neoplatonists afterwards adopted it, only adding
Truth as a fourth. St. Paul, as a Jew, judges pagan
society rather harshly , but it is significant that he
finds the pagans not only without faith and with-
out Love — “ hateful and hating one another,” but
“ without Hope.” This seems to have been broadly
true at the time when he wrote.

Judaism was always a religion of Hope. This is
why, for the Jews, insight always takes the form of
foresight ; this is why their preachers of righteous-
ness were always prophets. No nation ever suffered
such cruel disappointments ; but as St. Paul most
truly says, they “ against Hope believed in Hope.”

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ASSESSMENTS \ N D ANTICIPATIONS ^

They could not believe in a God who allowed the
world to be misgoverned, and they clung obstin-
ately to the belief that somehow or other justice is
done in this life.

One of the main subjects of the Old Testament is
the conflict of this faith with the hard facts of life.
At last, and very reluctantly, the Jews gave up the
notion that earthly prosperity is always a reward,
and adversity a punishment. They learned that
vicarious suffering is the law of redemption, and
began to believe, not very confidently, in a future
life. But hopefulness was one of the chief contri-
butions which they made to Christianity.

Two years ago Mr. Macmurray, of Oxford, wrote
an interesting paper on the startling thesis that
“ Science is the most Christian thing in the world of
our experience,” much more Christian than the
Churches. He thinks that the ideal which the
Greeks and Romans aimed at was security and
stability. Plato’s system of training in his ideal
commonwealth aimed not at encouraging originality
of thought, but at producing stability of belief.
All were to think alike, and to go on thinking alike ;
change was the enemy. The Romans in the same
way secured unity through outward conformity.
This has also been the policy of the Roman Catholic

Church, which inherited both the pagan traditions.

96

Christ, on the other hand, was all for freedom
and adventure. “ -The Sabbath was made for man,
not man for the Sabbath.” Faith, Hope and Love
look forwards. Faith is defined as confidence in
what we hope for, and conviction of what we do not
see.

The pagan ideal of security and stability prevailed
over the Christian, till the Renaissance and Reform-
ation, when Christianity entered into the conscious
life of Europe and became, as it ought always
to have been, a religion of hope and progress. But
even now the Churches hark back to the pagan ideal
of stereotyped perfection. Only experimental
science, s'ays Mr. Macmurray, has abandoned
security in favour of progress, and therefore “ experi-
mental science is the most Christian thing in the
modern world.”

The writer is not quite fair to the Greeks, to
whom we owe the origin of almost everything that is
alive and active in the intellectual world. And I
think that Nature tends towards stability — this is
the real meaning of evolution. But his thought is
highly interesting, and contains much truth. The
Church was certainly paganised, and it lost in the
process just that temper of hopefulness and trust in
the future which belonged to the Jewish character.
This temper, on the other hand, is buoyant in

97 7

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

natural science. Consider, for example, how hun-
dreds of men are giving their lives to discovering a
cure for cancer. How do they know that there is
any cure for cancer ? Very likely there is none.
But they won’t admit it ; and if there is a cure, they
mean to find it.

I am not writing this to encourage the irritating
person who goes about saying, “ I am always an
optimist ” — as if a barometer firmly stuck at “ set
fair ” could be of the slightest use to anybody.
No doubt hopefulness, well or ill founded, means
happiness, and happiness means efficiency. This is
the Gospel according to Uncle Sam. The Americans
make so much money by bluffing each other that
they think they can bluff Nature and the Author of
Nature. Christian Science, which has nothing to
do with either science or Christianity, is the
religion based on belief in the sovereign efficacy of
make-believe.

This, however, is not what Christianity means by
Hope. The Gospel does not bid us play tricks with
our souls in order to produce any results, external
or internal. It does not wish us to believe anything
except because it is true. And when Christianity
says that a thing is true, it does not mean merely
that it works, or that we should be happier for

believing it. It means that it is objectively true,

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HOPE

part of the laws of God’s creation. Hope is “ an
anchor of the soul,*’ fixed not on any earthly goods,
but on the eternal verities, “ within the veil,” be-
hind the embroidered curtain which is spread
between us and reality. It is, in brief, the temper
natural to immortal spirits under temporal proba-
tion, who know that their Heavenly Father loves
them, that their Lord has redeemed them, and that
the Holy Spirit is always with them.

Christianity is a religion, not of social reform,
but of spiritual regeneration. But though it does
not aim primarily at material and social progress,
it promotes progress very potently by indirect
means. What it calls the Kingdom of God, which,
as St. Paul says, is not eating and drinking, but
righteousness and peace and joy, is a goal both
more attainable and better worth having than what
the nineteenth .century usually meant by progress.
“The European talks of progress,” said Disraeli,
“ because by the aid of a few scientific discoveries
he has established a society which has mistaken
comfort for civilisation.”

Lastly, the great message of the Epistle to the
Hebrews is that Hope must often die to live. We
shall probably get not what we hoped for but what,
if our eyes were enlightened, we should recognise as
“ some better thing.” No pure Hope shall wither,

99

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

except that a purer may grow out of its roots.
But we must always be prepared for great disap-
pointments, and this is why St. Paul says that if in
this life only we have hope in Christ we are of all
men most miserable. Vulgar optimism, no less
than pessimism, is a treason against Hope.

JOO

9- IS THERE A COMMON
CHRISTIANITY?

R ELIGIOUS quarrels always seem ridiculous
to the bystander. Why should good
people get so excited about trifling differences,
when “ we are all going the same way ” ? How
often have we heard that the Catholics and the
Arians in the fourth century were squabbling about
“ one iota ” in the creed ! This may claim to be
the silliest remark ever made ; for there is no reason
why words which are spelled almost alike should
closely resemble each other in meaning. But some-
times it is really difficult to understand what the
quarrel is about. An Englishman incautiously
remarked to a Free Kirk Moderator that he could
not see any difference between the Free and the
Established Kirks. The answer was : “ The differ-
ence between us is just this — that we will be saved
and they will be damned.” Our Scotch friends are
now willing to admit that this judgment was too
sweeping.

IOI

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

The dominant party in the Church of England
has written its own histories, in which the Reform-
ation is represented as an unimportant and regret-
table episode in the annals of the Catholic Church.
This travesty of history has had a success which is
hardly credible until one has talked with the aver-
age Anglo-Catholic, whose whole view of the
situation is grotesquely distorted. The Protestant,
on his side, is quite determined to stand fast in the
liberty which he gained four hundred years ago,
and cares less than nothing for the “ Catholic
Tradition ” which forbids him, for example, to
break his fast before communicating. This may
seem a small matter, but it is not ; it is the differ-
ence between one religion and another religion.

This does not mean that the situation has not
changed in four hundred years. Most Churchmen
are practising pragmatists ; they take what suits
them, and do not trouble about first principles.
Some old controversies are really dead ; the world
has moved away from them. In every large Church
there are representatives of every type of religion ;
they are Catholics or Protestants by patrimony,
and if they wax fierce in controversy, as they often
do, they are actuated by native pugnacity rather
than by reasoned conviction. As long as sleeping

dogmas are allowed to lie, things may go on quietly.

102

IS THERE A COMMON CHRISTIANITY ? ^

All colours look much the same in the dark. But
when the issues are fairly raised, the leopard refuses
to lie down with the kid. The ardent Catholic and
the ardent Protestant discover that they worship
different gods.

Is Christianity anything more than the generic
name of the various religions professed by people
with white skins ? It is true that the morality
indicated by the different Churches is much the
same. But is this much more than the type of
character admired by all nations which have reached
the same stage of civilisation ? I have amused
myself with the propagandist magazine of the
Mohammedan Mission in England. I gather from
this publication that Islam is conspicuous for
religious tolerance, gentleness, and respect for
women. Modern morality is very different from
the morality of the Middle Ages, which also passed
for Christian, and from the ascetic ideals of the age
of the hermits. No religion, as practised, can be
far ahead of the current ideas and habits of the time.
It may represent what is best in the national charac-
ter, but would it be going too far to say that in
every generation Christian teachers use the figure
of the Founder as a peg on which to hang their own
best thoughts ?

What common measure can be found for those

103

Jj- ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

who in different ages and countries have been
accounted the most complete Christians ? Simeon
Stylites on his pillar, Origen in his study, St.
Francis of Assisi with his unwashed cassock and
his genial piety, the grim Ignatius of Loyola, as
merciless to himself as to others, Oliver Cromwell
at the head of his dragoons, the Quakers with their
gospel of non-resistance ; George Fox, John Wesley,
Cardinal Newman, Lord Shaftesbury — what is the
link between them ? What makes a Christian ?
Orthodox beliefs, devotionality, ' or a good life ?
When Christians anathematise and burn each other,
or sack each other’s towns as they did in the wars
of religion, what is it that they really wish to
establish and what is it that they wish to destroy ?

If Jesus Christ had never existed, it is practically
certain that the mantle of the Roman Caesars
would have descended upon some great ecclesias-
tical corporation, very like the Catholic Church.
Plato, with wonderful foresight, laid down the con-
ditions for such a form of Government ; he did not
even forget the Inquisition. Plato also, in another
part of his works, drew a picture of the perfectly
just man, who would end by being crucified ;
but he never thought of bringing the two pictures
together. Some kind of theocratic political corpor-
ation, deriving its religious ideas from the east,

104

IS THERE A COMMON CHRISTIANITY ?

where religions grow wild, its theology from Greece,
and its organisation from Rome, would have
appeared anyhow,, quite independently of what
happened in Galilee and Judaea. The Olympian
gods would not have stood in the way ; they died
a natural death when their worshippers became
extinct. The history of the Catholic Church, as a
political institution, has not much more than an
accidental connexion with the life of the Founder.

But this only means that we must separate two
different things— the revelation of the historical
Christ and the institutions which grew up under
His name. Nietzsche said : “ There has been only
one Christian, and He died upon the Cross.” But
this is not true. The revelation did not expire with
its Founder. All through the history of the last
nineteen hundred years it has acted as a leaven —
the simile com$s from Christ Himself.

The original Gospel has been one among many
formative elements in European civilisation. It
has been one element in the conflation which we call
Christianity, partly overlaid by other factors which
belong to local and temporary influences. The wave
of asceticism in the early centuries is, I suppose, to
be accounted for by the desperate condition into
which Graeco-Roman civilisation fell when the
barbarians were bursting the dykes and over-

105

assessments and anticipations ^

whelming the home of ancient culture. Men and
women ran away from a world which was hardly
worth living in. The dark ages which followed were
the period of the monk and the knight, of cloistered
mysticism and chivalry. Then civilisation awoke
out of sleep, and we find the Church encouraging
art and patronising the scholars of the Renaissance.

The Reformation was a struggle for independence
against Latin domination. It was in part a return
to the original Gospel, but this was a less central
feature of the movement than the Reformers sup-
posed. The leaven went on working in both parts
of divided Christendom, though both sides were
brutalised and coarsened by the exigencies of a
long and fierce struggle.

At the present time some of the principles of the
Christian religion have so far permeated the struc-
ture of civilisation that the Churches seem no longer
to have so much reason for their existence as they
had formerly. Social equality, which is a Christian
ideal, has come much nearer. Except in war-time,
society is much gentler and more considerate than in
earlier ages. The humanitarian movement is one
of the chief features of the modern period. Edu-
cation has been so widely diffused that this side of
the Church’s activities has been almost superseded.

These are the chief reasons why the Churches now

106

IS THERE A COMMON CHRISTIANITY f

appear so weak. The maintenance of the accepted
standard of morality- has largely passed out of their
keeping. But I see mo reason for thinking that the
“ leaven ” is any less potent than it used to be,
though it is still veiy far from “ leavening the whole
lump.”

The struggle between Catholicism and Protest-
antism is part of the eternal conflict between order
and liberty, between tradition and progress, be-
tween the past and the future. But in the concrete
the classification is by no means so simple as this.
Protestantism, in particular, has never quite found
itself, and is hampered by the dead hand almost as
much as the rival system. Nevertheless, it does not
commit the unpardonable sin of claiming a mono-
poly of divine grace and favour for the members of a
single political institution. This is, perhaps, the
greatest crime that a Church can commit ; so far
as it goes, it indicates a complete apostasy from the
mind of Christ, the greatest leveller of barriers that
ever lived. For us there is a common Christianity,
and we shall be constantly coming upon it, if we
look without prejudice, in the most unexpected
places.

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10. CHANGING RELIGION

W HILE Churchmen are wrangling about words
and phrases and details of ritual, some of
which no doubt involve important questions of
principle, few have realised that a more momentous
change is in progress — a Modernist victory at the
expense of both the old parties in the Church.

It is tacitly admitted that the old “ argument
from miracle and prophecy ” can no longer be used.
I do not mean that a clergyman may stand in the
pulpit and proclaim that he does mot accept the
miracles in the Creeds ; but when a young man tells
a Bishop that though he believes ex ammo in the
divinity of Christ, his belief is independent of the
traditional teaching about the Virgin Birth and the
bodily Resurrection, very few Bishops hesitate to
ordain him. This is one of the changes which have
come about silently and gradually. The centre of
gravity in religious belief has shifted very consider-
ably, and the Church is accepting the change.

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CHANGING RELIGION

The word “ supernatural ” does not occur in the
Bible. Nature is contrasted not with supernature
but with spirit. The spiritual world differs from the
natural in that it is invisible, eternal, above the
forms of time and space. We could not speak of
the spiritual suspending the laws of the natural, for
in one sense the two are too closely associated, and
in another sense too far apart.

When Whichcote, the Cambridge Platonist of the
seventeenth century, said to his opponent, “ Sir,
I oppose not rational to spiritual, for spiritual is
most rational,” he is claiming the supremacy of the
reign of law alike in the visible and in the invisible
world ; when St. Paul says that that which is
spiritual comes after that which is natural, he means
that there is an order of development which brings
us through nature to spirit, through the world to
God. This is quite different from the craving for
signs and wonders which Christ rebuked. “ A
faithless and stubborn generation seeketh after a
sign ; there shall be no sign given to this
generation.”

The idea of miracle as evidence for religious truth,
and the desire for such evidence, are characteristic
of minds at a certain stage of education. In primi-
tive societies such evidence, though it is readily
received, makes but a small impression, for the laws

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jjjg ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

of nature are not then understood. Where, there is
no law, there can be no miracle. When science
begins to establish the uniformity of nature,
miracles become more startling, but much harder
to believe. The golden age of supernaturalism is at
a stage intermediate between these two states of
culture. When God is banished from nature, and
men’s hopes and aspirations are fixed on another
world imagined as far away, then is the time for
stories of occasional intervention by God in the
natural order to be welcomed.

The period when Christian dogma crystallised
was one of these transitional stages. The two
worlds were kept too far apart, and were then
violently brought together by intercalating “ super-
natural ” phenomena in the natural order — an
expedient which neither spiritualises nature nor
naturalises spirit. These interveiitions are often
regarded as standing in no relation to the moral
character of those who benefit by them. God, we
are told in a modern Roman Catholic treatise,
sometimes asserts His liberty by suddenly elevating
souls from the abyss of sin to the highest summits
of peifection, “ just as in nature He asserts it by
miracles.” So the theory of arbitrary interventions
tends to weaken the moral sense, besides leaving us
helpless in face of absurd superstitions.

I to

CHANGING RELIGION

If omnipotence occasionally suspends the laws
of nature, such as gravitation, why should not
Christina mirabtlis have flown, without an aero-
plane, over the tops of the trees ? (On one occasion
this saint was unchivalrously brought down by a
monk with a stone, and broke her leg.) There is
this further danger, that the power of working
miracles is not confined to the Deity. The belief in
Divine interpositions has its dark counterpart in
the obscene supernatural, which turned life in
the dark ages into a’ long nightmare.

It is like coming out of a charnel-house into the
sunlight to pass from the world of witches and
devils, incubi and succubae, to manly utterances
like the following from William Law, the author of
the “ Serious Call ” : “ There is nothing that is
supernatural in the whole scheme of our redemption.
Every part of it Ijas its ground in the workings and
powers of nature, and all our redemption is only
nature set right, or made that which it ought to be.
There is nothing that is supernatural, but God
alone.”

Supernaturalism is no doubt a pardonable protest
against naturalism. When men feel themselves
threatened in their souls by a mechanical theory
which seems not only to deny human liberty but to
make the order of the world blind and irrational,

in

Jg- ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

they find a satisfaction in believing that the maker
of the clock sometimes jogs it or moves the hands.
To be sure, this does not restore human liberty,
but it asserts the unpredictable, which many people
like better than dull uniformity.

There is a curious reluctance to believe that we
live under regular laws, although it might be sup-
posed that a machine made by an all-wise designer
would run regularly, without the need of tinkering.
The orthodox apologist, driven from pillar to post
by the advance of knowledge, flatters himself that
there are still a few gaps in which he may take
refuge. It is an unwise notion. Those who take
refuge in gaps find themselves in a tight place when
the gaps begin to close.

No one says dogmatically that miracles are
impossible ; that is more than anyone can know.
But whereas in the dark ages it. was considered
the most natural explanation of a strange occur-
rence to assume that it was a miracle, we now expect
to find either that it was not a miracle or that it did
not happen. We do not call telegraphs, telephones,
and broadcasting miraculous, though they would
have seemed so two hundred years ago ; they are
not miraculous, because their mechanism is under-
stood. If something apparently inexplicable hap-
pens, we assume that there is a natural explanation,

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CHANGING RELIGION

and sooner or later vve find it. If we could be assured
that there is no natural explanation, we should
conclude that since the strange phenomenon cannot
be fitted into the course of events, it differs from all
other events in being entirely unimportant. We
should not trouble ourselves much about a meteor
which crossed the earth’s orbit and vanished for
ever into space.

This shows how completely our way of looking at
the world has changed. It is the change from a
catastrophic to an evolutionary world. Traditional
theology believed in a world in which the ordinary
course of history had no significance. The natural
tendency of mankind was, perhaps, they thought,
to get worse. But the history of the universe was
for them a cramped drama extending over only a
few thousand years, marked by four sudden
catastrophes. These were the creation of the
universe less than 6,000 yeais ago, the fall of man,
the redemption of mankind through the Incar-
nation, and the final end of the world, which might
be expected in the near future.

The conception of miracle belongs to a catas-
trophic, not to an evolutionary, scheme of the
world’s history, and many of our difficulties with
traditional theology arise from the fact that our
theology was constructed to agree with a catas-

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ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

trophic philosophy of history, whereas we all
believe in evolution.

It is quite possible to bring the Christian reve-
lation under an evolutionary scheme ; the Fourth
Gospel gives us more than a hint how this may be
done. But our religion is passing through a critical
transition, so that we cannot be surprised if it
shows signs of temporary weakness. This weakness
is most apparent in those bodies which are trying
to face the situation and adjust themselves to it.
The Diehards, for the time being, are in an easier
position, rejecting the new knowledge and the new
way of looking at the world altogether. But faith
and courage point to a more worthy attitude, which
will justify itself in time.

Only, if we are ready to accept the scientific view
of the universe, as in process of evolution by regular
laws, we must not give way to fatalism. If, as
Bacon said, nature is conquered only by obeying
her, it is equally true that she is obeyed only by
conquering her. Nature is a friendly opponent,
with whom we have to wrestle, like Jacob, till the
dawn of day, and who will yield her secret and her
blessing only to him who has struggled manfully
with her. This is a good world, because it needs us
to make it better.

“ Work out your own salvation, for it is God that

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CHANGING RELIGION

worketh in you.” We cannot get beyond this
paradox. Faith and grace are the obverse and
reverse of the same coin. Never and nowhere can
we say where nature leaves off and supernature
begins.

ll S

II. THE MID-DAY DEMON

“ T E DEMON DE MIDI ” is the name of
I j one of Paul Bourget’s finest novels.
The fanciful title is taken from the Latin trans-
lation of the Ninety-first Psalm, in which “ the
destruction that wasteth at noon-day ” (Revised
Version) is rendered daemomum mendianum, “ the
mid-day demon.”

The Psalmist may have been thinking of sun-
stroke, but Bourgct interprets the words as the
temptations which assail a man, not in the middle
of the day (though the theologians of the cloister
tried to make out that the assaults of acedia , that
characteristic sin of the monastery — a sort of
compound of gloom, sloth and irritation — were most
acute at that time), but in middle life, nel mezzo del
cammm di nostra vita. A man may have sur-
mounted the dangers of youth, only to fall a prey
to spiritual and intellectual arrogance bred of
self-confidence. It was the mid-day demon, he
suggests, who wrecked the career of the great

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THE MID-DAY DEMON

Napoleon. These reflections were started, for
Bourget, by reading the works of Chateaubriand,
the Catholic apologist, whose private life, he says,
did not harmonise with his literary pose. There
are, in fact, two men in many celebrated writers,
and it is difficult to decide which is the real man.
For example, there was a cynic and a sentimentalist
in Thackeray. Which was the real Thackeray ?
The critics are not agreed. Did the creator of
Colonel Newcomeyympathise with or despise him ?
Probably both parts of the novelist’s nature were
genuine, but it is true that he once confessed that
he would -have liked to write very differently, if
his public and his publishers had allowed him to do
so. The conventions of the Victorian age imposed
much restraint and a little hypocrisy on its liter-
ature, as modern critics are eager to point out.
This, however, *is not closely connected with Bour-
get’s main contention, which is that “ unbroken
success is one of the severest tests of character.”

We need not follow the plot of the novel, which
depicts the moral downfall of a middle-aged priest.
Let us take instead a quotation from a thought-
provoking essay, called “ Who laughs last ? ” by
Mr. F. A. Atkins. “ It is the middle-aged who need
to be awakened to a courageous facing of the facts

of life. . . . The sins of middle-age are • the

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ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

sins of the mind, the passion for power and posses-
sion. . . . That is one reason why middleage is a
much more dangerous period than youth.

“ The other reason is that middle-age will not
realise its peril. Few things are more tragic than
the deterioration of character which often sets in
about the age of fifty. The flame flickers, the divine
fire burns low. Middle-aged men think they have
survived the gusty, riotous part of life, and can
therefore slack down a little. . . . They are less
inclined to fight about anything, least of all against
their own weaknesses.”

This observation is not commonplace, -and it set
me thinking whether it is true.

The young, in my experience, are not so happy
as they are usually supposed to be. They do not
yet know what they are good for and what they are
bad for. They have to discover themselves and
their world, and to adjust the relations between
them. They do not know, though they may guess,
whether Providence has endowed them with five
talents, or two, or only one. The man with two
talents is sometimes the greatest anxiety to his
elders. The college tutor is often grieved to see
a boy who has very fair abilities apparently prepar-
ing to hide them in a napkin.

Sometimes, of course, but less frequently, a

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THE MID-DAY DEMON

young, fellow over-estimates himself, and flies at
higher game than he will ever bring down. Most
young men are rather secretive about their
ambitions, perplexities, and temptations, not wish-
ing to appear ridiculous ; but they suffer a good
deal in private.

They have to choose a career, and the choice
seems to them narrow and difficult. They tend to
follow the crowd ; in other words, to choose just
those professions which at the moment are over-
crowded. At one time the fashion at our Uni-
versities sets towards school-mastering, at another
to the home civil service or India, at another to
engineering, at another to what is vaguely called
business, which they think means a large fortune,
and which really means, for most of them, a stool
in an office for life. They are troubled about
religion, and no wonder, in the modern Babel of
rival prophets. In politics they are apt to join any
party which is the attacking side.

Many older men think they would be glad to go
back to the age of possibilities, when nothing has
been irrevocably settled ; but I do not think it is
the happiest period of life.

We turn to the same man, “ thirty years on ” —
the middle-aged citizen of fifty. If he is lucky, he

has found his work, or his work has found. him.

1 19

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS <§£

“ Blessed is lie who has found his work,!’ says
Carlyle ; “ let him seek no other blessedness.”

All the better for him if he has found the other main
source of happiness. “ A man who has work that
suits him and a wife whom he loves,” says Hegel,
“ has squared his accounts with life.”

He has formed habits — habits of industry, we
may hope ; and he prides himself upon his steady
attention to business, especially when he is reprov-
ing a son who has formed no habits and kicks against
monotony of any kind. He seldom reflects whether
in “ revolving the circle of his own perfections ”
he is not rather like a squirrel in a cage. Browning’s
grammarian spent his life in “ settling the business”
of Greek particles, not because he had resolved to
win heaven’s success and earth’s failure, but because
he would feel lost and miserable if he were parted
for a day from his study chair and library.

He has formed habits. Life has no more adven-
tures for him ; he can see the remainder of the dusty
road lying straight and even before him. He has
also ceased to worry about himself. “ Happy is
the man,” says Ovid, “ who has broken the chains
which hurt the mind, and has given up worrying
once and for all” ( dedoluitque semel). Happy in a
sense he probably is ; but what has become of his

ideals, wise and unwise ? Too often he has come

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THE MID-DAY DEMON

to a working understanding with, the world, the
flesh and the devil. They are not to interfere with
his “ regular habits,” and he on his side will serve
them reasonably and in moderation. His whole
character is suffering from fatty degeneration.
He may be a highly-respected citizen, but he is not
in the least interesting.

As time goes on, he is more and more inclined to
save himself trouble. His work deteriorates and he
becomes obstructive. If enthusiasm is wanted in
the cause with which he is connected, it is not from
him that we shall get it. People begin to say that
he is tired, of his job. The habits of an elderly cat
grow upon him insidiously, and the mice are no
longer caught.

Is he morally more conscientious than he was
thirty years ago ? Robert Louis Stevenson once
wrote an essay, on “ Crabbed Age and Youth,” in
which he champions the young. Supposing, he says,
that the old head could actually be put on young
shoulders, would the grave and reverend signor put
his money in the savings bank ? — Would he always
be discreet in his dealings with the other sex ?
Stevenson thinks that he would out-Herod Herod
and be perfectly scandalous. He agrees with the
witty Frenchman that “ the old like to give good
advice, because it consoles them for being no longer

12 I

It ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

able to give a bad example.” If science really
discovers bow to rejuvenate old men by grafting
into them, certain glands of monkeys, outraged
society may have to take very drastic steps to
reduce them to their foimer condition. Sometimes
a temptation to break through the life of decorous
routine actually comes, with tragic results. “ The
grey-haired saint may fall at last ” — though hardly
if he has been really a saint. The unscrupulousness
of the old is sometimes deplorable.

There are many who altogether escape the snares
of the “ mid-day demon.” They are preparing for
a beautiful old age, like the good man of whom
Sir Thomas Overbury writes, that “ he feels old age
rather by the strength of his soul than by the weak-
ness of his body.” Such men will generally be
found to have had troubles and disappointments,
which have broken the solid cake of habit and
checked the growth of self-satisfaction. Unbroken
success, as Bourget says, is almost too severe a trial
for anybody. It produces that type of “ self-made ”
man of whom an American said : “ Well, that
relieves the Almighty of a very heavy responsibil-
ity.”

Those of us who have reached this dangerous age,
as Mr. Atkins calls it, will be wise to be on our guard

against the “mid-day demon,” whose attacks are

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THE MID-DAY DEMON

multifarious and cunning. We must not allow
ourselves to be too comfortable for our soul’s
health. In the warfare of the spirit there is no
exemption for persons over fifty. They must stand
on guard till the end.

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12. LIBERALISM

W E are all glad that the Liberals should have
a little much-needed encouragement. We
should be sorry to see the House of Commons
divided between the Die-hards (or the Live-easys)
and the Socialists. Besides, the Liberals are such
good people, so thoroughly convinced that Life is
Real, Life is Earnest, so conscious of the highest
possible principles, so deeply attached to their
little repertory of catchwords, which will fit any
situation, that everybody must wish them well.

Nevertheless, we want to know what Liberalism
now stands for. It was a great ideal in the nine-
teenth century, and we knew fairly well what it
meant. It meant chiefly Mr. Gladstone ; and
though it was said that Mr. Gladstone could per-
suade most people of most things, and himself of
anything, we knew that there were some things of
which he would not try to persuade himself or
anyone else. For instance, he would never tell us

that public extravagance was a good thing, that

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LIBERALISM

the majority had a right to divide among themselves
the worldly goods of the minority, or that Christian
principles do not apply to foreign politics. We
might differ from him on many points, but our
purses and our consciences were safe in his keeping.

There is a very large class who would still rally
to Gladstonian Liberalism. The hard-working,
harassed, over-taxed population of the suburbs, and
many of Gladstone’s old supporters in Noncon-
formist chapels would give much to have the old
man back, and even the Tories would draw a
long breath of relief. But somehow or other,
Liberalism in the true sense of the word seems
to be politically dead. It died when it made its
wonderful volte-face from liberty to State control,
from individualism to Socialism. No ingenuity
can disprove the obvious fact that it has deserted
its old creed and almost all that it formerly stood
for.

Instead of frankly coming forward as the party of
the great middle class, the backbone of the nation,
the modern Liberal hobbles lamely after the Social-
ists, crying out that he also knows how to rob hen-
roosts and back the enemies of the country. But
since this is the programme of another party, it is
not easy to see why any clear-headed man should
at present vote Liberal.

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]jg ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

One political philosopher has found a funda-
mental contradiction in what he considers to be the
two dogmas of Liberalism — the value of free com-
petition, and the principle that every individual
must be treated as an end, not as a means. Both,
he says, are anarchical ; but whereas the first
logically issues in individualistic anarchism, the
last ends in Communist anarchism. To which it
might be answered that both are good principles,
if they are allowed to check each other.

Liberalism arose in the struggle against a social
order based on authority and unequal privilege.
“ Freedom of men under government,” says Locke,
“ is to have a standing rule to live by, common to
every one of that society, and made by the legis-
lative power erected in it.” But this demand for
equality before the law was only a preliminary to a
general revolt against all coercion imposed from
above. “ No taxation without representation,” was
a favourite cry. All the old authorities were curbed
and deprived of power — the King, the Church, the
landed aristocracy, even Parliament itself in its
relations to the constituencies. On the whole there
was a real increase of freedom. The poor man may
not always be much better off than he was before
the Reform Bills, but at least he stands upright,
and does not have to cringe to his so-called betters.

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LIBERALISM

Liberalism had one favourite shibboleth — “Away
with all restraints.” Freedom of trade and freedom
of contract ; freedom of thought and speech and
freedom of association were all included. The wife,
too, was to be made a fully responsible person,
capable of holding her own property and personally
protected against her husband, who was formerly
licensed to beat her in moderation. Every dis-
affected province of an Empire, if it called itself a
nation rightly struggling to be free, could count on
the sympathy of the Liberals. Large armies and
navies are wrong, because in the first place they cost
a great deal of money, and, in the second, “ force is
no remedy.”' This maxim, one of the silliest ever
coined by misdirected ingenuity, has always been
very dear to Liberals. If gangs of ruffians murder
loyalists and burn their houses in Ireland, we must
try “ conciliation, not coercion.” No “ political
offender ” ought to be treated like an ordinary
criminal.

Here we have a mixture of opinions, some good,
some bad, but all tending to abolish authority and
exalt liberty in the place of order.

Nineteenth-century Liberalism, as has been said,
depended on the theory of the Manchester School,
that the mainspring of progress is the unhampered
action of the individual, and on the Benthamite

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canon that the aim of all legislation and all moral
effort should be the greatest happiness of the
greatest number, everyone to count for one,
and no one for more than one. The second may,
of course, still be held when the first is discarded,
and this is, on the whole, what has happened.
But the two were combined in a very delusive
theory of human nature.

It was urged that if every man has the chance of
buying in the cheapest market and selling in the
dearest, trade will inevitably expand ; the work-
man will get the full value of his work, and all the
commodities that he needs will be cheap. Taxes will
be low, if armaments are kept down, and under Free
Trade the nations will not wish to fight each other,
since they must lose by doing so. As for the
colonies, we need not trouble about them ; they
will drop off, like ripe fruit. The restricted function
of government is to protect life and property.

There was much more truth and wisdom in this
theory than it is now the fashion to admit. While it
was accepted, England was a going concern as it
has never been since. And, in spite of the charge of
individualism, it was an organic theory of the nation,
aiming not at the enrichment of the few but at an
increase in the aggregate wealth of the nation.

But it transgressed in practice the other maxim of

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LIBERALISM

Liberalism, that everyone is to count for one and
no one 'for more than one. It bore hardly on the
workers till they were allowed to combine freely and
form powerful associations.

The tyranny of trade unions was an unexpected
development of laissez faire , though perhaps a
legitimate development. It has added another
demonstration of the fact that to abolish all
restraints is not always the road to real freedom.
A great strike is an awkward event for Liberals.
They concede the right of free combination, but now
it is used to hold up the community, as Dick Turpin
held up a coach. In the name of Liberty it must be
stopped, but “ Force is no remedy.”

If we may judge from Professor Hobhouse’s book
on “ Liberalism ” in the Home University Library,
there is nothing left of the old Liberal tradition
except a generous sympathy with the under-dog,
a dislike of force, and an antipathy to the bureau-
cratic Socialism associated with the Webbs. The
Professor does not wish to be treated as “ a mere
item in a census return.” He can accept almost any
scheme of confiscation without winking, and his
reaction against laissez faire goes so far as to say
that “ the opportunities for work and the remuner-
ation for work can be controlled, if at all, only by

the organised action of the community, and there-

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^ ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

fore it is for the community to deal with them.”
This does not seem to leave much scope for liberty
as the nineteenth-century Liberals understood the
word.

In fact, the Liberals seem to have turned their
backs on all their old principles, and they are likely
to be a broken reed in any future struggle against a
Red terror. Toryism approaches Socialism in its
desire for an organised and disciplined social order,
but this is precisely the side of Socialism with which
Liberalism has no sympathy. It is a disintegrating
principle, which may do great service when the ship
of State is in smooth water, but which gives no
promise of effective help against predatory raids
upon society. If we had a revolution (which
personally I do not expect) theirs would be the
futile part of Kerensky in 1917. If Labour comes
near getting a majority at a General Election, the
Liberals will be again ready to put a Red, or Pink,
Government m power. It is enough to make Glad-
stone turn in his grave.

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13- CONSERVATISM

L AST week I tried to answer a difficult question
— “ What is Liberalism ? ” For me, at any
rate, Liberalism means the political creed of Glad-
stone and Bright, bf Morley and Asquith ; and I do
not know what has become of their prophet’s
mantle. To-day I will try what I can make of
another question, not quite so difficult, but not
simple : “ What is Conservatism ? ”

Lord Hugh Cecil, in his companion volume to
Professor Hobhouse’s “ Liberalism,” enumerates
three component elements in Conservatism.

(i) Distrust of the unknown and love of the
familiar.

(2) The defence of Church and King, the rever-
ence for religion and authority.

(3) A feeling for the greatness of the country
and for that unity which makes its greatness.
This may be a good summary of the policy of
recent Conservatism ; but the three elements are
not equally matters of principle. Conservatives

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^ ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

would of course not agree with an Oxford orator who
said in my hearing : “ Any leap in the dark is better
than standing still ” — it would be a dangerous
maxim if one was caught in a cloud on the Matter-
horn — but “fy sms, fy reste ” is not an inspiring
maxim ; it is only the Liberal travesty of Con-
servatism.

Conservative support of Church and King is only
conditional, and Church and King are not always
united. The Tories packed off James II. when he
began to bully the Church of England ; and the
party to-day has no use for a Church which, in face
of a conspiracy to overturn constitutional govern-
ment, behaves as some of our Bishops behaved in the
spring of 1926. Even the connexion of Toryism
with Imperialism has not been constant. The Tory
Government towards the end of Queen Anne’s reign
was anti-imperialist and pacifist ; s.o was the Tory
revival under George III., when the elder Pitt was
ejected from office. The “ Little Englandism ” of
the Liberal Party began with Fox.

Lord Hugh Cecil rightly ignores the charge that
Conservatism is the party of the rich against the
poor. The strength of modern Conservatism is
suburban ; the typical Conservative is a poor man
in a black coat. At a time when a scavenger's
paid£200 a year, with valuable additions from the

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CONSERVATISM

rates ajid taxes, while the young professional naan,
whose education may have cost from two to three
thousand pounds, receives about the same, without
any subsidies from the State, it is ridiculous to talk
about the Haves and the Have-nots.

When we come to Patriotism we may seem to
have reached the root of the matter. Is Patriotism,
as Ruskin says, “ an absurd prejudice, founded on
an extended selfishness ” ? Is it, as Grant Allen
declares : “ a vulgar vice — the national or collect-
ive form of the acquisitive instinct ” ? Or do our
hearts glow when we read Sir Walter Scott’s lines :
“ Breathes there a man with soul so dead, who never
to himself hath said, This is my own, my native
land f ” and “ If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my
right hand forget her cunning ” ? We do not say :
“ Our country, right or wrong ” ; we can echo
Lowell’s words.: “ Our true country is bounded on
the north and the south, on the east and the west,
by Justice, and when she oversteps that invisible
boundary-line by so much as a hair’s-breadth she
ceases to be our mother.” We are primarily, as
Socrates and St. Paul agree, citizens of the city
whose type is laid up in heaven; but our earthly
country is to us the copy and image of it. Did not
Christ, who seldom wept, shed tears over Jerusalem?

Herbert Spencer, who hated Toryism, speaks of
i33

^ ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

the “ anti-patriotic bias,” which is so strangely
prominent to-day. Every enemy of England,
white, black, yellow or brown, has his champions
among us, and the admirers of the Mahdi and the
Mullah, of the Boxer and the Boer, of Gandhi and
Lenin, are found to be the same people. The
English differ, it seems, from other misguided per-
sons in never being in the right, even by accident.
Here is a mental condition which is abhorrent to the
Conservative as such.

Apart from his patriotism, a' sentiment which
may be degraded, but which may be one of the
noblest which a man can feel, the Conservative is
not a sentimentalist. The Anglo-Saxon countries
are the happy hunting-grounds of faddists of every
kind. There are some worthy people, invariably
Radicals in politics, who join and support every
“ Anti ” crusade. They are anti-yaccinationists,
anti-vivisectionists, anti-capital punishment, anti-
conscriptionists — it would take too long to enumer-
ate all the fads which flourish like green bay trees
in the mud which they are pleased to call their
brains.

Sentimentalists have soft hearts and softer heads.
But they are kind only to be cruel. They always
attack the symptoms and neglect the disease.
They have an instinctive dislike to science,

J 34

CONSERVATISM

especially the sciences like political economy and
eugenics, which insist that you cannot repeal the
laws of Nature by ignoring them. The obstacles to
scientific legislation certainly do not come from
“ the stupid party,” but from the other side.

Conservatives wish the country to be governed
by intelligence, and therefore they cannot really be
in favour of democracy, except as a pis allei.
Conservative Governments are sometimes false to
their principles, as when Disraeli tried to “ dish the
Whigs ” in 1867, with the inevitable result that his
own head soon adorned the charger ; or as when
our present government enfranchises the flapper,
a measure which will probably have the same
results ; but I suppose politics consists in choosing
always the second-best.

Herbert Spencer, the individualist Liberal, spoke
of Socialism as “ The New Toryism.” He meant
that Liberty is being sacrificed to Order, laissez-
faire to paternal regulation. Conservatism certainly
stands for Order as Liberalism stands for Liberty.
Obviously we cannot do without either of them ;
there is no internecine quarrel between a patriotic
and high-minded Liberal and a patriotic and high-
minded Tory. But the State Socialism of which
Spencer was afraid is no longer a living issue.
Things are not moving in that direction at all.

I 35

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS *§£

Modern Socialism is militant sectionalism — war-
fare of one class against another, and there is a
strong tendency to form international unions for the
purpose of civil war. This is flatly contrary to all
that Conservatism stands for. A nation divided
against itself will be brought to desolation. With-
out a feeling of loyalty and patriotism underlying
all political differences, popular government is
impossible. The end of revolutionary movements
is either chaos or a military dictatorship.

Conservatism is not on principle opposed to
steeply graduated taxation. But it holds that those
who pay the taxes ought to have some control over
the imposition of them ; this is the only check upon
reckless waste and predatory injustice. There is
nothing generous in voting away other people’s
money. “ Though I give all my neighbour’s goods
to feed the poor,” St. Paul might have said, “ and
have not charity, I am nothing.” Lord Hugh Cecil
gives the modern version of the Parable of the
Good Samaritan. The Samaritan runs after the
Priest and Levite, takes their oil and wine and
horses, and makes them pay the hotel bill of the
wounded man. There is a Latin proverb : Qui
suadet, sua det — “ Let him who exhorts others to
give, give of his own.”

There is no reason of principle why a Conservative
136

should "jpe either a Free Trader or a Protectionist :
it is a matter of expediency. Personally, I am a
Free Trader because I hold that unless our trade
can hold its own without Tariff walls we shall lose
it even with them, and because experience seems to
show that Protection leads to corruption ; but
there is much to be said on the other side.

There is nothing necessarily “ stupid ” about
Conservatism, though it has an uphill fight in our
generation.

14. SOCIALISM

T HERE are as many definitions of Socialism
as there are of Religion, and this is not
strange, for there seem to be almost as many Social-
isms as Socialists. As Dr. Shadwell says : “ When
Plato and Jack Jones, St. Paul and Trotsky, Sir
Thomas More and Tom Mann are tucked up together
under the same blanket, labelled Socialism, it is
impossible to say where such a very elastic coverlet
begins and ends.”

Mr. Ramsay MacDonald has composed a defin-
ition which he hopes will be acceptable to every-
body. It is a good example of Resolution English.
The essence of Resolution English is that each word
shall convey the least meaning that it can carry.
“ No better definition can be given than that it
aims at the organisation of the material economic
forces of society and their control of the human
forces ; no better criticism of Capitalism can be
made than that it aims at the organisation of the

human forces of society and their control by the

138

SOCIALISM

ecomonic and material forces.” This is the kind of
definition which is useful for the purpose of exciting
prejudice ; in dealing with concrete situations it is,
I should say, entirely unhelpful.

On the other side, presumably all Socialists
would agree in repudiating two definitions which I
have heard :

“ What is a Socialist ? One who has yearnings
To share equal profits from unequal earnings ;

Be he idler or bungler or both, he is willing
To fork out his sixpence and pocket your
shilling.”

And thi.s from America : “ Socialism is an

attempt to legislate unsuccessful men into success
by legislating successful men out of it.” These again
are definitions which are useful only as a means of
exciting prejudice or letting off steam.

The word Socialism is about a hundred years old.
Both the name and the thing arose as part of the
aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, just as a recru-
descence of it appeared just after the Great War.

It has its prophet, Karl Marx (1818-1883),
whose works are a sort of Bible to all Socialists.
Marx, says Mr. F. R. Salter, began as a journalist
who would have liked to be a don. He thought that
his Jewish nationality was an unfair handicap, and
soon developed a peculiar hatred “ complex,” which

i39

Jg ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

never left him. When he finally settled down in
London in 1849, be bad been expelled from three
European countries, and had seen three journalistic
ventures perish. He was a fierce-looking man with
glittering eyes and a bushy beard, a born agitator.

In true German style he laid down certain
“ natural-scientific ” laws of economic development,
which he borrowed from other theorists. There is
not one of his predictions which has not been
falsified by events, and there is not one of his
theories which has not been riddled by hostile
criticism.

He makes great play with the two words “ bour-
geois ” and <c proletariat,” a classification which
corresponds to nothing actual. They are both
French words, which have no equivalents in other
languages. The bourgeois in Moliere is the kind of
citizen who admires and apes his .social superiors.
The Revolution of 1 789 put power into the hands of
this class, which avoided the word for this reason
and adopted “ citizen ” instead. But the Saint-
Simonian Socialist meant by “ bourgeois ” every-
one who does not work with his hands.

Marx adopted this absurd name, and to-day it is
one of the catch-words which all Russian children
are taught to repeat, unexplained, of course.
“ Proletarian ” was a term of contempt in ancient

140

SOCIALISM

Rome fox the lowest class of citizens who did nothing
for the state except produce children. For Social-
ists, on the contrary, the proletarian is the worker
who, they say, produces all the wealth, though
most of it is taken from him. Latterly some of the
Socialists have begun to hedge, and to claim that
some brain-workers are “ proletarians.” Both
words, and the ideas connected with them, are
ridiculous when applied to such a society as ours.

The “ natural-scientific ” law that capital automat-
ically concentrates Itself in fewer and fewer hands,
so that the rich become richer and the poor poorer,
is the keystone of Marxism. Finally, he thought,
the trick could be easily done by expropriating a few
millionaire monopolists. No prophecy was ever
more ludicrously falsified. There has been a grow-
ing diffusion of capital ; the number of small
property-owners, has enormously increased. There
has been a vast levelling up and levelling down. No
more large private houses are built. A house built
a hundred years ago for .£135,000 was lately sold to
be broken up for £3,000. We can no longer dis-
tinguish classes by their clothes. There has, in
fact, been a progressive equalisation of incomes.
There has been concentration of management, but
this is a very different thing from concentration of
capital.

141

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

Marx was also a student of Hegel, from whom lie
borrowed certain phrases. He proposed, he said, to
make Hegel stand on his head, and preach material-
ism instead of idealism. With this trifling
exception, he stands forward as a Hegelian.

Nothing is now left of the Marxian theory of
value. Political economy has finally disposed of
it.

But though Marx was a poor economist, a poor
philosopher, and a very poor prophet, he brought
into the political arena something more effective
than argument. He is the apostle of class-hatred,
the foundei of a Satanic anti-religion, which
resembles some religions in its cruelty, fanaticism
and irrationality.

The chief cause of the entire failure of the Marxian
predictions was that the working-classes were
unwilling to “ sink deeper and deeper into misery ”
in order to please Herr Marx. They saw opportun-
ities for improving their condition, and they took
them, with the goodwill, on the whole, of the
employing class. The extreme Labour leaders still
look with disfavour on any measures which make
the working man more comfortable ; they would
prefer to see him driven to desperation. It is this
amicable policy, which they can hardly avow, that

makes them so bitterly opposed to the limitation of

142

SOCIALISM

population, and to emigration. Every superfluous
and unemployable man is a potential revolutionary.

The Communists had and lost their chance in the
years immediately after the war. The likelihood of
a violent social revolution in Europe grows less
every year, and the appalling object-lesson of
Russia, where Bolshevism has produced the most
complete hell upon earth that the world has ever
seen, has not been thrown away. Nevertheless, the
Labour vote on the whole grows in strength, and
seems likely to grow still further. Why is this ?

There are two causes of revolutionary move-
ments — desperation and aspiration, of which the
latter is the more important. Such movements
achieve a temporary success when those factors for
a time combine, which they will do when the forces
of law and order are obviously weakened, as they
were in France in 1789, and in Europe generally
after the Great War. It is not true that misery
generated either the French Revolution or the
Russian. An impartial study of French and Russian
history makes it clear that the position of the poor
was improving rapidly in France in the generation
before 1789 and in Russia in the generation before
1914. Hope, not despair, generates popular risings.
“ The growth of Socialism,” says Dr. Shadwell,
“ coincides with the rising standard of comfort.”

^3

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

The spontaneous movements of the wage-earners
themselves are almost always of this kind. Class-
hatred and class-warfare are preached, not by
genuine workers, but by middle-class enrages ,
driven half mad by hatred and fury against the
social system which has disappointed their
ambitions. These rascals sow the wind , the next
generation reaps the whirlwind.

The British Labour Party, which was once a
pioneer and model for other countries, has lost all
inspiration and independence, -and has become a
mere organisation for the progressive pillage of
minorities. It has practically dropped State
Socialism, since our workers have some notion of
liberty, and strongly desire to have “ a share in the
management,” which is contrary to the principles of
State Socialism. The Parliamentary section cannot
desire Syndicalism, which proposes to dispense with
representative government. They have just sense
enough to see that an alliance with Bolshevism
would knock them out for ever. Finally they
know that the attempts at State-management of
large enterprises, which have been tried in various
countries from Belgium to Queensland, have almost
invariably resulted in very heavy losses to the
State.

To sum up. Collectivism has been tried and has
I 44

failed. Communism has drowned itself in a river of
blood. Syndicalism regularises a state of civil war.
In a word, Socialism as a programme is quite
discredited. The most prudent course for the
Labour Party seems to be that which they are
following — to throw over all theories ; to prevent
their Left Wing from provoking an overwhelming
reaction ; to bribe the electors by promising them
the plunder of the minority ; and to stir up hatred
by wild charges against honourable statesmen.

Under universal .suffrage these tactics can hardly
fail. It is not Socialism, but a substitute for it,
which is coming upon us. The taxpayer probably
does not care very much with what sauce he is to
be cooked ; but a vast parasitic class is being
created, which would starve if capitalism were
destroyed.

15- PROGNOSTICATIONS

I . Introductory

I PROPOSE to borrow the mantle of a minor
prophet, and to offer some modest and
tentative predictions as to what Europe may be
like about a hundred years hence. The future of
Catholicism and Protestantism, of the Institution
of Marriage, and of Democracy, are subjects which
naturally occur to me among others. But to-day
I wish to consider whether a minor prophet can
justify his existence.

Philosophers have thought it a very strange
thing that we should be able to remember the past,
but not the future. Why are we blind on one side ?
The future is as real as the past. Omar Khayyam
wished to cancel from the page “ unborn to-morrow
and dead yesterday.” But if both past and future
are unreal, where are we ? The present is an
unextended point, which slips through our fingers
and is gone while we are thinking about it. The

146

INTRODUCTORY

whole course of time must be equally real, whatever
its relations to eternity may be. Why then, I
repeat, are we blind on one side ? There is nothing
corresponding to this blindness in our knowledge of
space.

I once, greatly daring, read a paper to a learned
society of metaphysicians on the subject “ Is the
Time-Process Reversible ? ” We have all seen a
reversed cinema film, and know what it would look
like if things happened in the opposite order ;
in a bathing pool, for instance, we should first see
a splash, then the heels of the diver describing a
semi-circle, upwards. The Queen in “ Alice in
Wonderland ” screams because she is going to
prick her finger. I suggested that we are travelling
through Time, and not Time through us, and that
we do not know the reason why we cannot take a
return ticket. We observe that if one thing hap-
pens, something else invariably follows, and then we
talk about causation. But perhaps there is no
causation between phenomena. If I am a necessary
consequent, given the atoms, the atoms may be a
necessary antecedent, given me.

However this may be, we have not the gift of
prophecy, and there are so many bad shots on
record that we may reasonably doubt whether any
prophets have been inspired. Men of letters hgtve

J4?

Jg ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

(as we might expect) not been quite so wide of the
mark as men of affairs. Napoleon thought that
Europe would, shortly either be Republican or
Cossack. The Cossacks are, for the moment, down
and out, and most of the countries which are
unlucky enough not to have kings groan under
dictators. Wellington thought that no sensible
man doubted that England would never again be so
powerful and prosperous as in the past. This was
just before the great Victorian era of expansion.
Sir Charles Dilke, about 1880, enumerated the Great
Powers of the twentieth century, and forgot to
mention Germany. Matthew Arnold, George
Meredith, and Lord Acton at least prophesied better
than this.

Nevertheless, we know more of the future and less
of the past than is usually supposed. Practically,
we know that a great many things will certainly
happen and that a great many other things will
certainly not happen. We know that sooner or
later the earth will cease to be the abode of life ;
we know approximately the number of people who
will commit suicide or die of cancer next year ;
and we know that if the astronomers tell us there
will be an eclipse there will be one — probably going
on behind the clouds.

On the other hand, 'what we know of the past is
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INTRODUCTORY

mostly not worth knowing. What is worth knowing
is mostly uncertain. Events in the past may be
roughly divided into those which probably never
happened and those which do not matter. This is
what makes the trade of historian so attractive.
The Deity, theologians tell us, cannot alter the past,
but the historian can and does. When Sir Robert
Walpole was ill and his attendant offered to read to
him, he said : “ Anything except history ; I know
that can’t be true.”

To predict the future, then, is not only the most
important part of the work of an historian ; it is
the most scientific and least imaginative part of his
duties. Our chief interest in the past is as a guide
to the future. A partisan history — and a non-
partisan history is like a heap of sawdust — is a
disguised prophecy. Johnson thought the devil was
the first Whig. Macaulay was determined that he
himself should not be the last, if his picture of the
irresistible current of events could prevent it. The
historian is a snob ; he always sides with the gods
against Cato, and lectures the fallen for their folly
in taking the wrong side ; but very often the
martyrs have the best of it in the long run. Sedet,
aeternumque sedebit mfehx Poland ! exclaimed
Seeley. But the Poles have proved that it is some-
times worth while to sit tight.

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ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

But the prophet is very liable to two mistakes.
The first is Utopianism. The future, as Anatole
France says, is a convenient place in which to put
out dreams. Bosanquet warns us that “ to throw
our ideals into the future is the death of all sane
idealism ” ; but Bosanquet’s idealism was too
strong a brew for most of us. We cannot help
believing, or persuading ourselves that we believe,
that the flowing tide is with us. Our neighbours
may be slow in adopting our views, which are so
manifestly right ; but the time will come when the
forces of obscurantism, ignorance, and prejudice
will be dispersed, and society will be reconstructed
on a more reasonable basis. In religion, we like to
think, superstition and bigotry have had their day ;
in politics, tyranny and injustice cannot last for
ever ; and so on. In reality, there is no natural
tendency for things to get better. A progressive
people will have a progressive religion, and a
decadent people will have a decadent religion. A
nation that deserves freedom will have it ; a nation
which gains freedom only to abuse it and to make it
the basis of some new oppression will deservedly
lose it. And the measure of progress is the kind of
people whom a country turns out. Mere increase
of wealth and technical knowledge will not prevent
a degenerate people from deteriorating ; if the tree

INTRODUCTORY

is good, its fruit will be good ; if the tree is corrupt,
its fruit will be corrupt. And a great deal depends
on whether the new generation is being recruited
from the best stocks, or from the worst.

But the Utopians cannot resist postulating
changes in human nature which will make their pet
nostrums workable. The societies which they depict
are rather like a farmyard of tame animals ; they
would be very dull to live in ; but the main objec-
tion is that men and women are not made that way,
and never will be. No doubt, if we could get rid
of the three strongest instincts in human nature —
religion, the family, and private property — some
kind of communistic State might be possible ;
but since these instincts cannot be eradicated,
Bolshevism will soon be remembered only as a
nightmare. Why is it, by the way, that no woman,
so far as I kn$w, has ever written a Utopia ? It
seems to be a masculine foible.

There are also a few natural pessimists, who
people the unknown future with visions of what they
fear, not of what they hope. This has often been
the error of Conservatives, who are generally more
clear-sighted than Liberals, but who forget that
things never turn out either so well or so badly as
they ought to do by strict logic. This points to the
other trap into which the minor prophet falls. He

I 5 I

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

sees things moving on in one direction, and assumes
that they will go on moving in the same direction
indefinitely. He forgets that people vote for liberty
because they are tired of anarchy. Every institu-
tion carries within it the seeds of its own dissolution,
and begins to dig its own grave as soon as tools are
entrusted to it. The pendulum swings first one
way and then the other ; the tide comes in and goes
out in regular alternation. Great movements are
seldom directed by reason ; the gentlemen in black
coats come in afterwards to prove that what has
been done is wise and good. As Frederick the
Great said : “ I begin by taking what. I want ;
I can always find pedants to prove my rights.”

I shall try to avoid these pitfalls, but I shall not
try to divest my anticipations of all valuation and
preference. And on the whole I shall lean towards
the belief that the better side, as Hsee it, will not
fail. Mankind in the mass is neither irrational nor
wicked, and society has the power of generating
anti-toxins for virulent poisons.

* 5 2

1 6 . PROGNOSTICATIONS

ii. The Future of Catholicism

T O a political philosopher the Roman Catholic
Church is the most interesting institution
in the world. Since 1918 it is the sole survivor of
a type of government which has had a long history
— a theocratic despotism. The history of Catholic-
ism as an institution is not part of the history of
religion ; it is the last volume of the history of the
Roman Empire. The Catholic Church was not the
beginning of the Middle Ages ; it was the last
creative achievement of classical antiquity, which
may be said to have died in giving birth to it, as
Greece died in giving birth to Hellenism, and as the
Hebrew State died in giving birth to Judaism.

The famous epigram of Hobbes, that the Roman
Church is the ghost of the dead Empire, sitting
crowned and sceptred among the ruins of it, is
familiar to everybody. It is not merely a clever
saying. It is the most appropriate way of describ-
ing the nature of this Church. The Popes rule like

I 53

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS £

Augustus, and still more like Diocletian ; Peter and
Paul have stepped into the shoes of Romulus and
Remus ; the bishops and archbishops, as Harnack
says, are the proconsuls ; the troops of priests and
monks correspond to the legions ; the Jesuits to
the imperial bodyguard. The Pope, who calls
himself Pontifex Maximus, is the successor of
Caesar. “ It is an Empire that this princely Caesar
rules, and to attack it with the armament of
dogmatic polemics alone is to beat the air.”

When the unwieldy mass of the Roman Empire
split into two halves, the Greek Empire and the
Latin Empire, there followed inevitably a split
between the two Catholic and Orthodox Churches.
In the East there was no Pope, but several Patri-
archates. The Church was the right arm of the
Byzantine Emperors, who were themselves invested
with semi-divine attributes. But, the Church was
always subordinate ; and the Russian Tsars, in
fear of the rise of an Eastern Pope, put the Patri-
archate into commission as the “ Holy Synod.”
This kind of theocratic monarchy lasted till the
Russian revolution ; for the Russian Empire was,
and was proud to be, a direct continuation of the
Byzantine. The Tsars always hoped to rule at
Constantinople, and to restore the East Roman
Empire.

i54

^ THE FUTURE OF CATHOLICISM^

In the West, the collapse of the secular Empire
under the blows of the barbarians left the Church
supreme, with a much less substantial “ ghost ”
than itself, the Holy Roman Empire (which, as has
been said, was neither holy nor Roman nor an
Empire), as its only rival. All that was left of the
old Roman tradition took refuge in the Roman
Church — its principles of government, vestiges of
culture, Roman law, and orthodoxy. The tre-
mendous prestige of the Eternal City among its
former subjects, and not less among its conquerors,
made it certain that if Western Christendom was to
have a capital, that capital could only be Rome.

It is interesting to trace the parallel evolution of
the Roman State and of the Roman Church — an
evolution from a republic to a camouflaged mon-
archy, and thence to a despotism of the Asiatic
rather than of the European type. The coping
stone was placed on Papal autocracy in the nine-
teenth century ; it has even been held that the
Pope might claim to nominate his successor. But
the political philosopher will find in the system of
Papal elections one of the most successful devices
for securing competent rulers, without the danger of
disorder at each demise of the crown, that the wit
of man has ever invented. (I need not explain that
the American who forced his way into the presence

J 55

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

of the Holy Father with “ Well, Pope, I used to
know your father, the late Pope,” showed an
ignorance of the institutions of an effete Continent
highly creditable to an honest democrat.)

It is no disparagement to the Catholic saints,
some of whom have revealed new possibilities of
beauty in human nature, to say that the political
record of this second Roman Empire has been
almost uniformly disgraceful. Founded upon
forged title-deeds and deliberately falsified history,
it has established its power by fraudulent miracles
and merciless persecution. The statecraft of these
priestly diplomatists has even been more unscrupu-
lous than that of other disciples of Machiavelli,
and no government until that of the Bolshevists
has been so uncompromising in suppressing liberty
of thought and speech. Above all, it has steadily
put forward, with astonishing effrontery, its claim
to be the only true church, and to be the sole
depository of divine grace. Rebels against the
dominion of the Caesar on theVatican were handed
over, as long as this was possible, to the secular arm
for the destruction of their bodies, and consigned to
eternal torments in a future state. This claim to be
the sole purveyors of a sovereign remedy is the most
familiar of all tricks of trade. The imposture has
been enormously lucrative to the Roman Church ;

156

^ THE FUTURE OF CATHOLICISM ^

but there are difficulties in maintaining it in
countries where other churches flourish side by side
with the Roman, and exhibit, so far as manjjcan
judge, the same fruits of the Spirit. He would be a
bold man who should maintain that the Quakers,
who have no sacraments, are not true Christians and
followers of Christ.

The prestige of this august Church has gained
rather than lost by the disappearance of other
monarchies of similar type. Especially, the tempor-
ary ruin of the Orthodox Eastern Church has
removed the only competitor whose rivalry could
not be despised. Hopes are even entertained by
Romanists that the persecuted Christians in Eastern
Europe and Asia Minor (if there are any left) may
be willing to accept the protection of the Holy See.
This, however, is most improbable. The Russian
Church will emerge from its ordeal, purified and
strengthened.

I hope to consider next week the prospects of the
Protestant Churches. The opinion is widely held
that Protestantism has received its death-blow
from Biblical criticism, and that Europe a hundred
years hence will be either Catholic or not Christian
at all. Roman propagandism is always zealous and
subtle. A thin trickle of converts never ceases to
flow from the Protestant Churches to the Roman,

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Jg ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

and it is almost an article of faith with Catholics to
believe that the spiritual Empire will one day
recover its lost provinces. At present, for various
reasons, which I shall consider next week, the
Catholic type of worship is more attractive than the
Protestant, and even within Churches which are
nominally Protestant there is a marked approxim-
ation to Catholic methods, which smoothes the
way to conversions.

Another factor which may be useful to Catholic-
ism is the activity of anti-Christian and anti-social
international revolutionary movements. If these
become more menacing, many who are not Roman
Catholics may think that salvation can only come
from another International, which, with all its
faults, is pledged to preserve the continuity of
civilisation and of the spiritual tradition. If
Bolshevism ever spreads over the civilised world
(a disaster which becomes less likely every year),
it is quite possible that the Roman Church may be
invited to save society from total ruin.

But Romanism offers more legitimate attractions
than this. It is immensely wise and experienced in
dealing with human nature, cherishing no illusions
about progress, and content to use methods which
have stood the test of many centuries. If we

consider religion not as a science or philosophy, but

158

Jjj THE FUTURE OF CATHOLICISM^

as an art — the art of acquiring a character and
habits which are regarded as desirable — we shall
understand better the strength of the Roman sys-
tem. The priests say virtually, “ If you admire
the character of the Catholic saint ; if you would
like to be that kind of person ; if you would wish
to be free from all uncomfortable doubts and to be
personally conducted through life, put yourselves
under our training, and we will promise to deliver
the goods.” Catholicism, in other words, is a very
successful system of mind-cure. Even if the treat-
ment is by quackery, the average patient would
rather be cured by a quack than treated unsuccess-
fully by orthodox science.

Nevertheless, I do not think that Roman
Catholicism will advance very much further,
though it is not likely to decay. It is entangled
inextricably with supernaturalism and belief in
the occurrence of miracles, at a time when scientific
education and the scientific atmosphere are becom-
ing generally diffused. Roman Catholicism cannot
come to terms with the scientific spirit, though it
may slip out of its recorded condemnations of some
scientific discoveries. When women receive a sound
secular education, the main supporters of the Latin
form of Christianity will begin to fall away. We
shall, I hope, see a new branch of ethics, based on

i59

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS

science, and Catholicism will pass no coins which do
not bear the stamp of its own mint.

Besides this, the glamour of the name of Rome has
now faded away. The Roman Empire looks very
small on the map of the world. The greatest modern
nations no longer look up to Mediterranean civilis-
ation as the highest. They are not Latins, and are
no more likely to become spiritual subjects of an
Italian priest than to pay taxes to the King of
Italy. The Roman Church, in fact, is an extra-
ordinarily interesting survival, for which every
classical scholar must feel some sympathy ; but
its expectations of universal dominion are a mere
romantic dream.

160

X']. PROGNOSTICATIONS

hi. The Future of Protestantism

I T has become customary both among Roman
and Anglican Catholics to speak of Protest-
antism as a spent force. In a hundred years, they
predict, the Protestant Churches will have fallen to
pieces, as in the early centuries of Christianity the
Arian Churches fell to pieces after flourishing for a
few generations. Lutheranism, they say, will not
long survive the fall of the German monarchy which
supported it. Calvinism is discredited both by the
growing desire for beauty and artistic embellish-
ment in divine worship, and by the moral
impossibility of believing either in the total
depravity of human nature or in the predestination
of many human beings to eternal damnation. The
Anglican Church is in chaos — it is a collection of
incompatible religions held together by the Estab-
lishment. Nonconformity was the creed of middle-
class Liberalism. The life has gone out of it. In

161

’g. assessments and anticipations ^

the future men will be either Catholics or infidels.
In answer to all this, I will give my reasons for
thinking that Protestantism must change, but that
it is not at all likely to disappear.

Protestantism did not begin at the Reformation.
It is a recurrent phenomenon in the history of
religion, a revolt against the corruptions which
always threaten institutional Churches. Churches
are founded to safeguard a revelation ; they end by
strangling the ideas which they were meant to
protect. When a Church ceases to be a voluntary
association of enthusiastic believers, and becomes
the purveyor of spiritual comforts to the unregener-
ate majority, its doctrines either congeal or
evaporate ; its discipline falls into the hands of a
crafty priesthood ; ceremonial observances dis-
place moral obligations ; and primitive super-
stitions again lift up their heads, to be exploited by
the hierarchy. Protestantism is a w protestation ”
— an earnest declaration — that (in the words of
Micah) the Lord requires nothing of us but to do
justice and love mercy and to walk humbly with
our God. It insists always on the same things —
ethical purity, individual freedom, immediate
access to the throne of grace.

The Prophets were the Protestants of the Old
Testament. The conflict between priest and

162

THE FUTURE OF PROTESTANTISM

prophet is perennial ; there is seldom a truce,
except when “ the prophets prophesy falsely, and
the priests bear rule by their means, and the people
love to have it so.” The Prophets and Psalms are
full of denunciations of priestly religion with its
feasts, fasts and sacrifices.

Christ Himself led a Protestant movement in the
Jewish Church. He placed Himself in the prophetic
succession ; He lived, taught and died as a Prophet,
and as a very revolutionary Prophet. With
sovereign confidence He set aside the Law of Moses.
“ It was said to them of old time . . . but I say
unto you,” something different. The old garments
and the old wineskins must be discarded. The
Sabbath was made for man, not man for the
Sabbath. According to a story preserved in an old
manuscript of St. Luke, “ finding a man working on
the Sabbath He said to him, Man, if thou knowest
what thou doest, thou art blessed, but if thou know-
est not, thou art cursed and a transgressor of the
Law.”

As for ceremonial washings, fastings, and the like,
He declared that nothing which enters into a man
can either sanctify or defile him. From within,
out of the heart of man, proceeds all that can
exalt or debase the character. (St. Paul interprets

this rightly, “ He that regardeth the day, regardeth

163

Jg ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

it unto the Lord, and he that regardeth not the day,
to the Lord he doth not regard it. He that eateth,
eateth unto the Lord, and giveth God thanks ; and
he -that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and
giveth God thanks.”) Christ even said : “ Destroy
this Temple ” (the institutional centre of the Jewish
Church), “ and in three days I will raise it up ” —
a spiritual Temple built in the hearts of men for a
habitation of God through the Spirit. Thus Christ
abolishes all barriers of race, colour, sex, and Church
by ignoring them. No intermediaries are needed
between God and man. There is an end of all
sacrifices, except the consecration of ourselves.
He founded no new religion in the ordinary sense of
the word — no organised Church, no priests, no
sacred writings. If ever there was a drastic Protest-
ant movement in history, it was the original
Gospel of Jesus Christ.

There is therefore ample justification for the
claim of evangelical Christians that they only wish
to go back to the fountain head. They say justly
that every feature of the religion to destroy which
Christ suffered Himself to be nailed to the Cross has
been brought back in His name. There were many
abortive attempts at a Reformation in the Middle
Ages, of which that of our own John Wyclif is one

of the most interesting, and finally there was the

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THE FUTURE OF PROTESTANTISM

great secession of Northern Europe from Rome in
the sixteenth century. In the Latin countries the
movement was again crushed ; the traditions of
Rome were too powerful. In the Northern countries
independence was gained. But what else was
gained ?

Luther and Calvin were both mediaevalists, and,
from the point of view of humanists like Erasmus,
reactionaries. Neither of them was a philosopher,
and Luther was a most inconsistent theologian.
How little he understood the principles of
evangelical Christianity may be judged by his
answer to the question whether if a mouse ate a
crumb of consecrated bread, the mouse would have
partaken of the body of Christ. Luther said,
“ Yes.” Calvin was a learned theologian, as well as
a great organiser. But even more than Luther
he is responsible for the greatest blunder of Protest-
antism, that of substituting the verbally infallible
Book for the infallible Church, as an external
authority of the same type. Of course, the truth is
that both sides were fighting for their existence,
and that as a result of the savage Wars of Religion,
both the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation
were narrowed, stiffened and brutalised. In war
there is no room for sweet reasonableness, nor for
philosophers.

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^ ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS

Calvin was a more formidable opponent of Rome
than Luther, being more consistent and uncom-
promising ; but his extreme bibliolatry, his exag-
gerated language about human depravity, and his
doctrine of predestination, which is really
pantheistic, since it acknowledges only one effective
will in the universe, are all alike intolerable to
modern ideas.

In our own generation there is also a revolt against
the social teaching of Calvin. The modern business
man, it has been said, if he is not a child of the
Ghetto, is a grandchild of John Calvin. That
curious product of industrial civilisation, the busi-
ness man, who works like a slave and sometimes
rules like a slave-driver, for the sake of wealth
which his principles and habits alike forbid him to
enjoy, and who never asks himself whether there is
any rational justification for the life which he has
chosen, is the direct result of Calvinism. The type
is becoming extinct, but it may still be studied in
America and in Scotland.

Nevertheless, I agree with Santayana that the
meaning of all this is that the northern nations have
not yet found themselves in religion. They dis-
covered four hundred years ago that the
Mediterranean religion did not suit them, and it

never will suit them. But we are, as Santayana,

1 66

^ THE FUTURE OF PROTESTANTISM «§£

who is a Spaniard, tells us, still inexperienced bar-
barians, compared with the older and more
sophisticated nations of the South. The uneducated
Southerner, if he is religious, is a pagan pure and
simple ; the Northerner indulges in ridiculous fads,
such as Anglo-Israelitism or Christian Science ;
he maintains that when St. Paul recommends
Timothy to “ take a little wine for his stomach’s
sake,” the medicine was for external application
only , and that the text : “ Worship the Lord with
clean lips,” condemns the use of tobacco. These are
the absurdities of honest barbarians ; the Latin
races do not make fools of themselves in that
particular way.

But there is a deep seriousness and earnestness
about the Northerners which will not rest till they
have found a religion which will satisfy both their
conscience and their intelligence. That this religion
wall be Christian need not be doubted ; that it will
not be Latin Catholicism is certain ; but it is
equally certain that it cannot be Protestantism as
we have known it. The seat of authority will not
be the Bible, but the mind of Christ — the Gospel
interpreted by the “ testimony of the Holy Spirit
within us.” This Christ-mysticism is the centre of
St. Paul’s religion. Further, the Protestantism of

the future will have made its peace with Humanism

1 6 7

Jg- ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

— which now means science rather than literature.
It will welcome the new knowledge instead of
anathematising it, and will try in every way to
represent and to consecrate whatever is best in the
civilisation of each nation.

j68

l8. PROGNOSTICATIONS

iv. Education m 2,000 A.D.

A WELL-KNOWN man of letters recently
asked a Frenchman, a Swede, a Dutchman,
an American, a Chinaman and a Japanese : “ What
is the leading interest in your country ? What do
your people really believe in ? ” They all answered:
“ Education.”

If these men were right, we must expect that all
over the world the twentieth century will be a period
of enthusiasm foi; education, of bold experiments in
education, and of unstinted public expenditure on
education. Education is an essential part of the
great experiment to which we are committed — that
of extending civilisation right through the popu-
lation, instead of restricting the higher culture to a
small class. Equality of opportunity, and a career
open to the talents, are as far as possible to be
secured to all. In the future we are to have no
more mute inglorious Miltons, and no potential

169

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS

Darwins condemned to a local reputation as
collectors of butterflies.

It is a fine idea ; but it will raise many problems.
We do not want an educated proletariat, a crowd of
starving clerks, artists, penmen, and secretaries.
We do not want to take the ablest sons of the
working man and put them all into black coats.
This is in fact what we are doing •with our system of
subsidies and scholarships restricted to the sons of
poor parents. The learned professions (except the
Church) are in consequence over-crowded ; the men
in black coats compete for a starvation pittance,
and are much worse off than the skilled labourer.
Our parlour Bolshevists often come from this class,
and unfortunately, many of them are teachers of
the young.

Education ought to be partly an apprenticeship
to what boys and girls are to, do afterwards.
Perhaps in the future this will be recognised. At
present domestic economy, down to the humblest
details, is much better taught in expensive girls’
schools than to those who will be the wives of
working men or domestic servants.

Those who have had a public school and uni-
versity education may be tempted to give too much
importance to the future of those institutions, for

which, as a rule, they cherish an almost romantic

170

EDUCATION IN 2000 A. D.

affection. But the question is really of national
importance.

Nothing has contributed so much to create
“ two nations ” in England as the tradition of
“ a gentleman’s education.” But the distinction is
not at all between the rich and the poor, as Disraeli
declared in “ Sybil.” It is a rapidly disappearing
social cleavage, peculiar to this country, which ran
across the middle of the bourgeois class. On the
upper side of the line were those who had received
a classical education, which as Dean Gaisford said
in the Oxford University pulpit, “ not only leads
to positions of considerable emolument, but entitles
those who have received it to look down upon the
vulgar herd.”

This precious education was a legacy of the
Renaissance and of the Middle Ages, and is a
wonderful monument of stolid Conservatism. To
show reverence for the Greeks, who knew no
language but their own, English boys were taught,
not their own language, but ancient Greek. In
recognition of the practical ability of the Romans,
who believed in eloquence, they studied, not
Chatham and Burke, but Cicero. To make them
love their own country, they learned by heart, not
the legends of King Arthur and Shakespeare’s
historical plays, but the patriotic literature of the

i/i

^ ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

ancient Hebrews. The city they were never to
forget was not London, but Jerusalem.

The method of teaching was to cram down the
boys’ throats gobbets of crude information, to be
presently disgorged in the same state at the next
examination. The only really classical thing about
this system was the plentiful use of the birch or
cane, with the cult of athletics, of which the
modernist Euripides complained in almost the same
words as Rudyard Kipling. The results, however,
were quite good. It is a consoling thought that
with all our pains we cannot do our children much
harm.

University education has been a continuation of
the public schools, with even slacker discipline and
less social tyranny. The sporting pass-man is now
being eliminated from most colleges, which is a
good thing ; but there are complaints at Oxford of
the havoc wrought by the undergraduette. “ She
spoils the men’s Mods by getting engaged to them
and their Greats by jilting 'them.”

Public school education is being thoroughly
reformed, and I could not join in the severe criti-
cisms which are passed upon these much beloved
and venerated institutions. Their influence tells
upon many of the new County Council Schools,
which are often presided over by an Oxford or

172

EDUCATION IN 2000 A. D.

Cambridge Scholar, who teaches his boys to love
their school and to play for their side, according to
the best public school tradition.

But the question is whether the economic stress
and the competition of State education will not
destroy the public schools. They will fight desper-
ately for their lives, but I fear that only a few of
them will be left at the end of the century. There
are no signs of decay at present. All the great
schools, and new foundations like Stowe, are full
to overflowing. But I do not think that this will
last long. The number of fathers who can afford
to spend .£3,000 on a boy’s education, with the
prospect of seeing him, at the age of twenty-two,
glad to accept the wages which our county councils
give to a scavenger, is not large, and will become
smaller.

At present the system is maintained by an
expedient which is nationally disastrous. If we
examine ten or twenty pages of “ Who’s Who,” and
count the average families of those who are success-
ful enough to be included in that “ Debrett of the
middle class,” we shall see that the average family
is one son and one daughter. This limitation of
families, which amounts to the slow suicide of a
whole class (three or four children are necessary
if the numbers are to be kept up) is mainly the result

173

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

of the enormous expense of “ a gentleman’s edu-
cation.” The consequences, in the opinion of all
eugenists, are deplorable. Not only are the good
upper and middle class families the backbone of the
nation, and the main source of its greatness, but in
each generation the most brilliant members of the
working class make their way into the class which
is now voluntarily sterilising itself. Our present
social order skims off the cream in each generation
and throws it away.

Much as I should regret to see our public schools
shut up, I think that when almost all parents are
driven to take advantage of the excellent State
schools which will soon be available in every laige
town this motive for race-suicide will disappear.
The heaviest burden will be lifted from the shoulders
of the poor professional man, who will also usually
prefer one of the new universities, which have no
residential colleges, and are about 50 per cent
cheaper than Oxford and Cambridge.

I have left myself very little space for the subjects
of education. Here psychology may be expected to
sweep away the remains of traditional folly. In-
stead of making a child do whatever he most
dislikes, and whipping him whenever outraged
nature rebels, we shall consider his healthy tastes,
and adapt ourselves to them. What does the child

i74

EDUCATION IN 2000 A. D.

like doing ? To talk and listen ; to act (dramatic-
ally) ; to draw, paint and model ; to dance and
sing ; to know the why of things ; to make things
with his hands. Aristotle was a good psychologist-
when he said that “ imitation ” is the foundation of
the arts. Further, from eight to sixteen is the time
to learn by heart ; when a young man goes to the
university, the less he crams for examinations the
better.

We may expect that secondary education will
have two branches — humanism and science. The
former will include the classical masterpieces,
read chiefly in translations ; but it will be based
mainly on English literature.

What about religious education ? Religion is
caught rather than taught ; I do not think that the
“ religious lesson ” does much good. But most
assuredly the schools ought to aim at making their
pupils good Christians. The main obstacle comes
from two fanatical sects, the Roman Catholics and
the Communists, who wish to dye their children’s
minds indelibly with their own colour, turning them
into finished little bigots. If religion is banished
from education it will be the fault of these compara-
tively small sects. On the other hand, I see the
difficulty of teaching a religion which shall be no
religion in particular. It is almost like talking in

i75

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

a tongue which is no language in particular. This
is a problem for the future.

Finally, here is a story which we shall do well to
lay to heart. A foreign diplomatist, in conversation
with an English lady, loaded our nation with
compliments till she said : “ I shall not believe that
you are sincere in all the nice things that you have
said about us, unless you end up with something
really disagreeable.” He hesitated for a minute,
and then said : “ You are the worst-educated people
in Europe .” (Of course he did not mean to include
Russia and the Balkans in “ Europe.”) If this is
true, or anywhere near the truth, we have our work
cut out for us.

176

19- PROGNOSTICATIONS

v. The Great Powers in A.D. 2,000

T O attempt to draw a map of the world with
its political boundaries three-quarters of a
century hence would be a rash and even foolish
proceeding. No one can foresee what coalitions and
alliances may be made, or what annexations and
redistributions of territory may result from the
next world-war, if that immeasurable calamity
should occur. But certain general principles of
political prediction may be laid down, and their
main consequences indicated.

Countries which are already saturated with popu-
lation are likely to be relatively, if not absolutely,
weaker than they are now, and countries which
could support a much greater number than their
present population are likely to fill up and to be
stronger than they are at present.

Countries which from their size and geographical
177 l2 /

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

position are relatively invulnerable will have a
great advantage over those which live in constant
danger of attack by powerful neighbours. They will
profit by having (so to speak) to pay much less in
insurance against burglary.

Countries which are nearly self-supporting as
regards the necessaries of life and the law materials
of wealth are more secure than those which are
obliged to import their food or coal or oil from
abroad — unless, indeed, they are too weak to defend
their natural wealth.

Countries which are peopled by mutually antag-
onistic races, like the Austrian Empire before the
War, are at a disadvantage compared with very
homogeneous countries like France, or with coun-
tries where nationalities are fused, like the United
States.

Among the countries which are already saturated
with population the chief are Great Britain,
Belgium, Holland, Italy, India, China and Japan.
Two of these — India and China — have very large
areas and immense populations. But in both cases
the growth of numbers seems to have almost ceased,
and neither China nor an independent India is likely
to be dangerous as a military Power, though either
of them would speedily drive the white man from

any country in which its labourers were allowed to

178

£ THE GREAT POWERS IN A.D. 2000 £

settle .freely. This has been thought by some to
make the future of Australasia somewhat pre-
carious, especially as Japan, where the natural
increase of population is still excessive, ranks as a
military power of the first class. But the popu-
lation of Australia is also increasing, though rather
too slowly, and the Australians are magnificent
fighters. Moreover, they could count on help from
America as well as England if invaded by a yellow
race.

The United States will probably have a popu-
lation of 250 millions, and will be practically
unassailable. The only question is whether the
Americans will rule over the whole of the New
World. I am inclined to think that Canada will
remain politically independent of the United States,
though in social life it will, I am afraid, be
thoroughly Americanised. I do not think that
Latin America will be absorbed. The former
Spanish and Portuguese colonies are increasingly
conscious of their race, and they will grow in popu-
lation and wealth even more rapidly than the
United States.

In 2,000 A.D. South America will be almost as
much Italian as Spanish, for the swarming Italian
population, excluded from North America, must find
homes south of the Rio Grande. The Latin Repub-

179

’g- ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

lies will probably form an alliance or loose confeder-
ation to protect each other against aggression from
the North. There are several other South American
countries beside Argentina which are intended by
Nature to be the homes of great and wealthy
nations. We may, therefore, name the United
States and the South American group as two of the
mightiest Powers of the world three generations
hence.

The other great nation whose future can hardly
be in doubt is Russia. The Slavs, as Bismarck
truly said, multiply like rabbits, while the Germanic
races only multiply like haies. The normal growth
of a Slav population is nearly 20 per thousand per
annum. Russia is not very likely to split up, or to
remain split up, because there are no natural
frontiers across its great plains. European Russia,
with scientific agriculture and _ manufactures,
could support nearly double its present population,
and Siberia is potentially richer than Canada. The
present paralysis of the nation may continue for a
few years longer, but no one supposes that it can
last more than one generation. As soon as Russia is
free, it will begin to press heavily upon Europe and
Asia, as it did in the nineteenth century. We shall
then look with very different eyes upon Germany,

as the rampart against the Slavification of Central

180

the great powers in A.D. 2000 ^

and Western Europe. The Germans thought that
we were very ungrateful not to recognise this in
1914 ; but they had only their own war-lords to
thank if we believed that at that time Germany
was the more pressing danger.

It is, in my opinion, idle to expect that any of the
European nations (Russia is not really a European
nation), with their small areas, will be a match for
these huge aggregates. There is no reason why the
British Commonwealth of nations should not hold
together as an alliance of several virtually independ-
ent peoples. But an alliance is not so strong as a
single government ; and if we look at the British
Isles apart from the Dominions beyond the seas,
I do not think that we shall be still a Power of the
first class in the year 2,000. The decline may be
only relative, not absolute ; but our pride is likely
to suffer some mortifications.

The same applies to France. An industrialised
France could carry, perhaps, ten millions more than
its present population. But the millions of black
mercenaries, on whom the French rely for “ the
next war,” are not likely to be a source of strength ;
and we may hope that any nation which employed
savages to fight its battles would meet with the
fate which it would deserve.

Germany and Austria will probably unite, and
181

^ ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

will keep the border against Russia. It will not be
possible, just, or desirable to keep Germany perman-
ently disarmed, and Austria can hardly remain in
its present mutilated condition.

Annexations do not always determine the fate of
peoples. Quebec became a prosperous French
Colony as a result of Wolfe’s victory. Tunis is
becoming an Italian province under the French
flag. Cuba, which is now the richest country in the
world per head of the population, next to the United
States, owes everything to the defeat of Spain by
the Americans. The advocates of disarmament
must remember that it is only by the unsparing
use of force that the high-standard countries can
escape being swamped by cheap labour. But “ the
Rising Tide of Colour ” is, in my opinion, dangerous
only in the field of economic competition. As I have
said already, it is not true that the Browns and
Yellows are increasing more rapidly than the
Whites.

If it were possible to form a United States of
Europe, this group would be irresistible. Ethno-
logically, there is no reason against it. All the
European nations are composed of the three great
racial types — Nordic, Alpine and Mediterranean,

differently mixed. The Alpine type (round-headed)

182

3e THE GREAT POWERS IN A.D. 2000 £

is very weak in Britain, and Scandinavia may be
almost purely Nordic ; but there is no nation with-
out racial admixture. We are all mongrels.
In America the emigrants from all European
countries live together amicably ; why, it is asked,
should not Europeans consult their own manifest
interests and do the same ? It is an ideal worth
working for ; but I fear that national prejudices
and well-justified suspicions may prove too strong,
unless, indeed, Europe is driven to combine for
mutual protection. At present the only rivals to
nationalism are the Black and Red In^prnationals —
Ultramo'ntane Catholicism and Communism.
Heaven forbid that old-fashioned patriotism should
be destroyed by either of these !

I have said that in my opinion the very small area
of Great Britain makes it inevitable that we shall
cease to be one of the Great Powers of the world.
This need be no great loss, since we shall be able to
keep our independence. Some of the smaller
countries of Europe are among the most highly
cultivated, and among the most agreeable to live
in. The England of Shakespeare and Milton was
by modern standards a very small country indeed.
It might even be plausibly argued that all the
greatest things have been done by small countries,

183

Jg ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS

such as Palestine, Athens, and Florence. .But in
this article I have merely attempted to guess what
is likely to happen, without any predisposition
either to optimism or pessimism.

20. PROGNOSTICATIONS

vi. Social Life In The Next ioo Tears

T HE chief effect of the Great War was to
precipitate changes which were taking place
slowly and gradually. Sir Edward Grey, in 1914,
warned the Austrian Ambassador that at the end of
the war everything that the Central Empires wished
to preserve would disappear. It was a true pro-
phecy. In 1911 I ventured to say to a German
publicist that if a European war broke out Europe
would be wantonly sacrificing its last fifty years of
supremacy — the tertius gaudens would be America.
This also was, I think, a true prophecy. But the
social changes that we are seeing began long before
the war.

The golden age of the middle class began in 1832,
though the old oligarchy kept much of their power
for a generation longer. The downfall of the
bourgeoisie began with Disraeli’s clever stroke to
dish the Whigs in 1867, though as before the effects
of the extension of the franchise were not very

185

^ ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

apparent till another generation had passed. Now
under universal suffrage the helplessness of the
middle class is painfully apparent, especially in the
professions. Before the end of the century we may
see such a state of things as exists in America.
An American naval attache told me that as a naval
officer he was considered no credit to his family.
His relations tried to persuade him to give up the
navy and become a shopkeeper. But I do not
expect that we shall be commercialised to this
extent, and hope that the prestige of the Army,
Navy, and the learned professions will be kept up,
in spite of the poverty of those who choose them.

The solid comfort in which the British professional
man lived in the last century was quite exceptional.
The great scholars and thinkers of Germany in the
pre-Bismarckian age were content with a very few
hundreds a year, and were honoured as they
deserved. The same has always been true in France,
where the prizes, even in the legal and medical
professions, are very small as compared with those
which a leading barrister or surgeon wins in this
country. I hope that the big legal fortunes, which
seem to me a scandal, will before long be a thing of
the past. The enormous fees paid to the most
persuasive counsel are simply a measure of the

incompetence of our tribunals. It ought not to

1 86

SOCIAL LIFE IN THE NEXT IOO YEARS ^

make nearly so much difference whether a litigant
is able to retain a leader of the Bar or a capable
young advocate.

Big fortunes continue to be made in America,
partly because they are easily won, and partly
because it is worth while to make them. In England
they will be increasingly hard to make, and it will
be hardly worth while to make them, since the
confiscatory death duties will render it almost
impossible to found a family, which has always been
the main object of an Englishman’s ambition.
Very few men would work with the object of being
very rich in their old age if they knew that the State
would take more than half their savings at their
death. Now that the possession of wealth is
treated as a sort of crime, the old ostentation is
rapidly disappearing. In twenty years there will
be very few large country houses left. They are
among the few beautiful things that we have to show
to our visitors, but they are doomed. The whole
face of the country will be spotted with bungaloid
growths, within which childless couples will sleep,
after racing about the roads in their little motor-
cars.

As in America, the typical house will be servant-
less. Meals will be brought in from a delicatessen
shop, and heated by a gas or electric cooker. The

IS?

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

art of supplying standardised needs by pressing
buttons will be carried to great perfection.

The population will, I think, begin to decrease
slowly before 1950. The increase at present is
entirely due to the preponderance of young lives
in the population, which keeps the crude death-
rate (about 12 per 1,000) very much below the real
death-rate (about 18 per 1,000). As the rate of
increase slows down, the age-distribution of the
population will gradually become normal, and
between 1940 and 1950, if my calculations are
correct, the crude death-rate will rise to meet the
real death-rate.

A decline in numbers would relieve the terrible
burden of unemployment, which in part at least is
clearly due to over-population, and a little more
elbow-room would be very desirable.

Social equality will go further even than economic
equality. Education is rapidly removing the
differences of dialect which in England, perhaps
more than in other countries, accentuate social
barriers. Now that gentlemen’s sons are, in
hundreds, becoming bagmen, shopwalkers, and what
not, while the sons of workmen are entering the
professions through the county council schools and
State subsidies, a man’s occupation will soon be no

indication of the position of his parents. In all

188

^ SOCIAL LIFE IN THE NEXT 100 YEARS

callings unprotected by trade unions there will be
increasing competition, and perhaps a higher
average of ability. But the trade unions are likely
to make it difficult for newcomers to enter the
trades, and it is quite possible that before the end
of the century a boy may become a miner or a
bricklayer “ by patrimony,” as he now becomes a
member of a City Livery Company. In this
way a modified caste system may arise in the
trades, each unionist being allowed to bring in
one son.

There is much in this prospect to which we may
look forward without regret — especially the growth
of social equality. Lord Chesterfield (he of the
letters) found fault with the manners of Samuel
Johnson because, as he said, the lexicographer
treated everyone alike. A gentleman, his lordship
thought, ought to.have a different and appropriate
manner to his superiors, his equals and his inferiors.
In our day Lord Chesterfield would soon be made
to understand that his own manners were intoler-
able. But we have still something to learn in this
respect from well-bred Americans, who reserve a
deferential mode of address for age and proved
worth. It is here, and not in politics, that demo-
cracy may claim to be Christian. Christianity has
nothing to say f<j£ or against democracy as a form.

$89,

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

of government, or as a form of State, but .as a form
of society it is on the side of democracy. The true
gentleman has, of course, learned this lesson ; but
those whose social position is not well defined are
still liable to fall into snobbery and arrogance.

The greatest danger which we have to fear is the
result of universal suffrage. We are not heading for
Socialism. Socialism seems to have died in giving
birth to its misbegotten brat Communism, an
utterly unworkable scheme. What is called Social-
ism is simply political bribery on a large scale ;
and under universal suffrage the largest bribers are
likely to win. A new class of tax-eaters, as Cobbett
called them, is being created, much larger and
therefore much more dangerous than the idle rich
of the past. The dole is the most mischievous and
ruinous device for buying off revolution that has
ever been invented. It was resorted to after the
Napoleonic War in the form of out-door lelief out
of the rates ; and the burdens on the land soon
became so intolerable thart' farmers began to throw
up their farms, and parsons their livings. At that
time the receivers of the dole had no votes, and the
Government had the courage to bring the pernicious
system to a sudden end. Now, no Government
would dare to do anything of the kind.

A generation is growing up, a laige proportion of

190

’g- SOCIAL LIFE IN THE NEXT 100 YEARS ^

whom has never done an honest day’s work. They
apply every week for their twenty-five or thirty
shillings, as proud as if they had deserved well of
their country. If they are offered thirty-two
shillings a week for some unskilled labour, they
reject it with scorn. “ What ? Me work for six
shillings a week ? I have a right to twenty-six
shillings for doing nothing.” They will not emigrate,
for no country in the world makes things so
comfortable for its Won’t-Works as England
does.

Besides the dole, there are other exemptions and
subventions which go far beyond the value of the
labourer’s work. This new parasitism is strangling
the industry of the country, and preventing the
recovery which would soon reduce the numbers of
unemployed. The effects are very deadly, for
people are coming to look to the State as an
inexhaustible lucky-bag into which everyone has
the right to dip. The habit of honest work is lost,
and a vast number of useless mouths is being
maintained, who every year become more incapable
of making good.

It is not easy to see how any remedy for this
terrible evil is to be found. It is a bad sign that
is already accepted as an incurable and permanent

drain on the resources of the nation. Whole classes

191

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

are going under beneath the burden, and making no
audible complaints. It is like the state of things
under the later Roman Empire, when the middle
class met their fate in dumb resignation. Resigna-
tion is the disease of which civilisations die.

21. PROGNOSTICATIONS

vii. The Future of Marriage

S HORTLY before the Great War, in a sermon
which I preached at the consecration of a
Bishop, I said that the Church was winning its
battle against intemperance, but was in danger of
losing its battle against immorality. About the
same time an opponent of Christianity said that the
religion of Christ was preparing to die in its last
ditch — sexual ethics. We have not yet been driven
to our last ditch, but it is certain that we can never
evacuate this particular line of trenches. Christian-
ity stands or falls with its doctrine of the sanctity
of the marriage tie, whj.ch its Founder proclaimed
in uncompromising language, and which from the
first has been regarded as the earthly symbol of the
love and loyalty which unites the Church to
its living Lord. There can be no shilly-shallying
here.

And yet the institution of monogamous marriage
193 13

^ ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS

is everywhere assailed. In many States _ of the
American Union divorce is so easy and so common
that marriage is looked upon as a revocable experi-
ment. A few years ago, when we were visiting one
of the North European countries, our hosts apolo-
gised for asking divorced persons to meet us, on the
ground that it was difficult to make up a dinner
party if they were excluded. In almost
every country divorce is steadily increasing, and
public opinion becomes more and more tolerant
of it.

Views are widely expressed, particularly in
fiction, which undermine the whole basis of Christian
mariiage. For the Christian, the marriage vow is
not a declaration of passionate love, but a promise
of life-long faithfulness. It is the most solemn
engagement that a man or woman makes in the
whole of his or her life. It involves a definite
pledge of sexual fidelity, and of mutual affection in
health and sickness, in prosperity and adversity.
The promise is made more sacred by being ex-
changed “ in the sight of God,” but it is also a
pledge of personal honour, than which nothing can
be more stringent.

In opposition to this, the theory of the popular

novelist, and of a large section of society, is that

194

THE future of marriage £

marriage is only binding while the two parties are
physically attracted by each other ; that if love —
or rather lust — is transferred to another object, the
marriage-tie may be broken without scruple ;
and that the adulterous pair may “ regularise their
position 55 by going through the form of marriage,
after which they expect to be received as respectable
members of society.

Since the subject of these articles is the probable
state of Europe, and especially of Britain, at the
end of the present century, we must consider
whether this laxity is, in its degree, a new thing,
and whether it is likely to last. This is a most
difficult question to answer, because there never
has been a time when moralists were not ready to
exclaim with Cicero, “ 0 temp or a ! 0 mores ! 33 and
probably with good reason. But I think there is no
doubt that waves of licence and of Puritanism tend
to follow each other.

In the Middle Ages chivalry was by no means so
pure as we should suppose after reading the “ Idylls
of the King.” The nobles did what they liked with
the wives and daughters of their vassals, and those
who are curious about the morals of the clergy in the
so-called Ages of Faith may be referred to Lea’s
“ History of Clerical Celibacy. 35 There was prob-

*95

^ ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS

ably some improvement, from prudential motives,
after the appalling outbreak of a hitherto unknown
disease at the end of the fifteenth century ; but
English Puritanism was followed by the age of
Charles II., of whom, it might be said, as of “ Le
Rot d’Tvetot” : “ Ses snjets avaunt cent raisons de
le nommer leur pere” The morals of the Regency,
after the great war against Napoleon, were equally
depraved, though perhaps the licence a hundred
years ago was mainly among the privileged classes.
After the accession of Queen Victoria there was a
sharp reaction. The aristocrats had to seek the
help of the middle class against revolution, and to
adopt, or pretend to adopt, their standard of
morality. It is probable that the sanctity of
marriage has never been so generally respected as
during the reign of the Old Queen. After her death
the pendulum began to swing m the opposite
direction, and the Great War undoubtedly gave a
great stimulus to looseness of morals.

It is supposed in England that in the Latin
countries the menage a trots has always been an
institution ; but some who know the French well
say that we ought not to judge them by their novels.
In Russia the relations of the sexes have always been
looser than in the West, and since the revolution
they are said to be almost unspeakable.

196

Are tye to expect another wave of Puritanism ?
It is quite possible, and much to be wished. But
the revolt against what is called taboo-morality
is very widespread. Marriage, we are told, was
made for man, and not man for marriage. Even if it
be granted that the majority of marriages are happy,
it must be allowed that mistakes are frequent, and
that a thoroughly ill-assorted marriage blights the
happiness of two persons who might be tolerably
happy with other partners. Ought not the victims
of such errors to be granted relief, not only by the
law of the land, but by public opinion ? Why
should marital infidelity be accepted as a cause for
the dissolution of marriage, while other offences,
which are even more destructive of happiness, are
not admitted as sufficient ? Might it not be argued
that the rule generally accepted by religious people
is plainly based on what is supposed to be the
authority of the Gospels, although Christ never
wished to be a legislator, and always gave us
general principles, not laws, leaving us to apply
those principles to circumstances as they might
arise ?

There is hardly any other question concerned with
morals in which a definite decision is so difficult.

It is easy for those who enjoy the supreme blessing

197

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS

of a happy marriage to ignore the miseries o.f those
who have chosen badly, and to quote the old maxim
that “ hard cases make bad law ” It may be
answered that it is a bad law which multiplies hard
cases, and that bad laws ought to be repealed. My
own opinion is that marriage between an adulterer
and his or her paramour ought never to be allowed
even by the State, and also that the Church is
right to exact a stricter standard than the civil
law. But I should hesitate very much to say that
no misconduct except infidelity should be recog-
nised by the Church as a sufficient cause for the
dissolution of a marriage.

The tendency now is toward greater freedom, and
it is unlikely that the rigour of the Victorian age will
be restored. Nevertheless, we may hope to see a
healthy reaction against the present looseness. The
popular novels of to-day may, tweiity years hence,
'be as completely excluded from decent houses as
the books of Mrs. Afra Behn -were from Victorian
drawing-rooms. The authors will be rightly served
if this oblivion overtakes them.

It is possible that a distinction may in future be
recognised between marriages in church and those
at a registrar’s office. Those who are married in a

church or chapel will be understood to have taken a

198

THE FUTURE OF MARRIAGE ^

vow of lifelong fidelity, which it would be in the
highest degree dishonourable to break. Those, on
the other hand — and the number of them may-
increase — who look upon marriage as an experi-
mental partnership which may without disgrace be
dissolved by mutual consent, will naturally be
content with a ceremony before a registrar.
Religious bodies may insist on the religious cere-
mony as a condition of full membership — as a
condition, for example, of admission to the Holy
Communion ; but this is only one of several
difficult problems of Church discipline, which it is
not necessary to discuss here.

The rate of illegitimacy is happily very low in
England, and it is not likely that irregular unions
followed by the birth of children will become much
more common, or will be generally condoned. In
several other European countries the outlook is far
less favourable. But with us, at any rate, I do not"
think that the institution of marriage will be
seriously threatened.

Marriage has established itself as the happiest
condition for the average man and woman, even if
we admit with Rudyard Kipling that “ Down to
Gehenna or up to the throne, He travels the fastest
who travels alone.” And it is the knowledge that

199

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS

both parties may trust each other absolutely. to keep
troth that makes marriage happy. Under other
conditions any tiff may lead to a rupture, and any
Outside friendship may be a cause of suspicion and
jealousy.

200

22. PROGNOSTICATIONS

viii. The Failure of Democracy

H OW shall we be governed seventy-five years
hence ? The Americans, who are the only
real Conservatives left, will bring out their
Victorian shibboleths, and tell us that the irresist-
ible march of Democracy must continue till all our
effete survivals are abolished. But on the other side
of the Atlantic the word Democracy is charged with
emotional values which have very little to do with
either the meaning of the word or with our experi-
ence of that particular adventure in government.
In fact, “ Democracy ” in America means anything
or nothing at all, which makes it an excellent
slogan.

We who have seen the thing at close quarters
are not inclined to bum any more incense before
the fetish. It was a necessary phase in political
evolution ; that it is the final phase hardly anyone

believes any longer. It is in the curious position

201

^ ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

of having no friends, though we all did lip-service
to it when we wanted to bring the Americans into
the war. The rich have never liked it or believed in
it. The middle class, that patient Issachar bowed
between two burdens, would prefer almost any other
form of government. The labouring class used it as
a weapon to destroy privilege, but is now thoroughly
out of patience with it. All the new radical move-
ments are openly anti-democratic. Democracy
continues only because there seems to be no
alternative, or because we don’t like the look
of the alternatives — Lenin, Mussolini, or the
Pope.

History indicates that Democracies are short-
lived. Von Sybel said that universal suffrage
always heralds the end of popular government.
Tocqueville saw that the more successful Demo-
cracy is in levelling a population, ^he less resistance
the next despotism will meet with. Others have
said the same thing — a democracy may end in a
despotism, but not in Socialism, which belongs to a
different order. Democracies, another critic has
said, always die young, and of the same two diseases
* — the destruction of national credit and prosperity
by predatory legislation, and the emergence of
militant groups which the state is too weak to
control,

303

THE FAILURE OF DEMOCRACY

The power and danger of Democracy both rest on
a superstition — an imagined divine or natural
sanction. The ballot-box is a Urim and Thummim
for ascertaining the will of the Deity. The odd man
somehow enj oys plenary inspiration. “ Vox popuh,
vox Dei.” But the voice of the people on one
notable occasion cried “ Ciucify him ! ” and its
verdicts are often not much more intelligent than
this. As Sir Henry Maine wrote : “ Universal

suffrage would have prohibited the spinning-jenny
and power loom, the threshing machine and the
Gregorian calendar ; it would have restored the
Stuarts.”

The art of the demagogue is that of the parrot ;
he acts on the suggestibility of the crowd by repeat-
ing some senseless catchword. It is not a pleasant
trade ; in fact, it is so repulsive that men of high
character often refuse to have anything to do with
democratic politics. “ Few,” says Louis Simond,
“ will take the trouble of persuading the people,
except those who have an interest in deceiving
them.” An American has remarked that those who
shout Abraham Lincoln’s clap-trap about “ govern-
ment of the people, by the people, and for the
people,” usually want to live on the people, by the
people, and for themselves. It is an ignoble art,
because it consists mainly of vicarious bribery.

203

^ ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

Individuals sometimes rise above selfishness ;
classes never. Herd-morality is centuries behind
individual morality.

And yet the democratic machine seems to the
cupidity of the masses to work too slowly. The
millennium comes no nearer. The process of
dividing up the worldly goods of the minority seems
to be much more difficult than might have been
supposed. The Syndicalists already speak of
Democracy as a bourgeois conception. Why, they
ask, should the majority rule ? The majority must
obey those who are wiser, and above all more
determined, than themselves. This is the language
which they use, and in countries where there is no
tradition of popular government the revolutionary
party, if victorious, makes no attempt to establish
it. There is no country in the world where Demo-
cracy is spurned with such unqualified contempt as
in Soviet Russia. If we compare the Russian
Revolution with the French, we can see how far the
world has moved in a hundred years. And the
movement has been away from the “ ideas of
1789.”

One of the advantages of Democracy is that it is
so unworkable that it covers a whole system of
shams, some of which are tolerably serviceable.
Public opinion mediates between herd-morality and

204

Jk the failure of democracy

the much higher morality of conscientious individ-
uals. It is also more intelligent than the impulses
of the herd, being to some extent inspired by
respectable thinkers. Representative Government
still produces a capable set of men to act as legis-
lators ; and though they are no longer allowed to
vote as they please, their masters for the time being
are not so much the electors as the Cabinet — a
secret committee which is quite undemocratic, and
in a sense unconstitutional ; it has grown because
it was needed. We have also the equivalent of a
Second Chamber in the permanent Civil Service —
a very able body of men w r ho would make it difficult
for a Labour Government to fulfil its wdlder
promises. It is these mitigations of Democracy
which make its continued existence possible , and
perhaps expedients of this kind may keep it in
being for the remainder of the century.

We have not yet had experience of a Government -
of the large bribers, coming into power weighted
with numerous pledged of wholesale confiscation.
We cannot expect to escape this fate much longer,
and the results may convince those who have any-
thing to lose that a continuance of democratic
institutions would be suicidal. But I think we shall
go on as we are, without any constitutional change.
Schemes of nationalisation are likely to be dropped,

205

jg- ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

since whenever they have been tried, the conse-
quence has been a heavy loss to the Exchequer.
What we may expect to see is the imposition of
heavier and heavier burdens upon industry, and
the steady growth of the class which is already
sucking the life-blood of the nation.

In a few years the unemployed become perman-
ently unemployable, a dead-weight on industry, and
a temptation to all who prefer football, cinemas, and
“ chocolate money ” to honest labour.

So far as I can see, the only government which
would be strong enough to bring this disastrous
state of things to an end would be that form of
government which we are least likely to see —
a bureaucratic State-Socialism resting on military
force. Another great war, followed by revolution-
ary outbreaks, might lead us to acquiesce in this
type of government ; but it is wholly alien to the
temper and traditions of the British nation, and
perhaps we are the least likely among all the nations
of Europe to put ourselves "under such a system.
Failing this, I believe we shall continue to try to
make Democracy work till the end of the century ;
but we shall be in the condition of an animal
devoured by parasites, and less and less able to
keep itself in a state of health and vigour.

A good government should of course be organic,
206

THE FAILURE OF DEMOCRACY ^

representing the nation, not the populace, which is
only the most numerous class. The future is with
organised and skilled direction, as Mr. Wells has so
often told us ; but this is peculiarly difficult to -
obtain under democracy. I know that there are
dangers in over-organisation. Under bureaucratic
tyranny the individual life may lose value for itself ;
and when this happens there will be no more fruitful
effort. But I do not think that we in England need
fear this, though the same result may follow if the
Treasury lies in wait for all savings. “ The value of
institutions,” says Mr. H. A. L. Fisher, “ depends
upon the extent to which they assist the free
development of human powers and the adequate
remuneration of merit.” This is a sound Liberal
maxim, which recalls the days when Liberals had
principles and believed in them. There is room for
such a party in the State to-day.

All forms of government are bad ; but there is
hardly any which could not be made to work
satisfactorily if we all chose as our motto the maxim
which Mr. Bernard Shaw says is the test of a
gentleman : “ Try to put into the common stock
as much as you take out.” What we put in may,
of course, be any valuable contribution, not neces-
sarily a marketable commodity. As for private
property, let us end with St. Thomas Aquinas :

207

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

“ The possession of riches is not unlawful if the
order of reason be observed — that is to say, that a
man possesses justly what he owns, and that
he uses it in a proper manner for himself and
others.”

208

2^. PROGNOSTICATIONS

ix. Scientific Morality

I T is perhaps too optimistic to include this
article in a series of predictions. I am not at
all sure that the morality of our great-grand-
children will be scientific. Science has many
enemies. Science is a good aristocrat, and aristo-
crats are not popular. Science believes in the dry
light of reason, and most people are content to
provide themselves with a faith as they buy a pair
of spectacles. They do not care whether it is true,
if it helps them to see what they want to see.

Besides this, many people think that Nature
has either no morals, or bad morals. The impression
which the universe, as now interpreted, makes upon
the imagination is, they say, magnificent, but ter-
rible and cruel. Nature may be summed up by
conjugating the verb “ to eat ” in the active and
passive. The more we know about what goes on
behind those scenes of natural beauty which delight

209 *4

Jg ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

and elevate our minds, the more appalled we shall
be at the wastefulness and heartless cruelty which
are Nature’s methods. Those who base their moral-
ity on science are suspected of disliking the human-
itarianism which is an integral part of modern
civilisation, and of wishing to advocate ruthless
and inhuman schemes of social surgery.

Nature, says Santayana, is a blind and blameless
giant. It is our business not guiltily to imitate her
innocent crimes, but to use her as an instrument for
realising our own ideals. Huxley in his famous
Romanes Lecture went further. “ Since law and
morals are restraints upon the struggle for existence
between men in society, the ethical process is in
opposition to the principle of the cosmic process,
and tends to the suppression of the qualities best
fitted for success in that struggle.” “ Cosmic
nature is no school of virtue, but the headquarters
of the enemy of ethical nature. The cosmos works
through the lower nature of man, not for righteous-
ness, but against it.”

I should call this radical pessimism. For how
can man hope to resist the process of the universe ?
It is like the Scandinavian mythology, which ends
in a final defeat of the gods by the Titans. Such
thoughts are likely to lead us to the philosophy of
Schopenhauer, who taught that there is an irre-

210

SCIENTIFIC MORALITY

concilable contradiction between the interests of
the race and those of the individual. Nature
dangles before us various deceptive baits, of which
the passion of love is the most insidious, in order to
get her hook in our nose, and force us to subserve
her purposes, which are not our own. He saw in
race-suicide the escape from the worst of all
possible worlds.

But are we really obliged to give up the com-
forting faith that “ the universe is friendly ? ” It
is a great mistake to consider the cosmic process
apart from man. The cosmic process is responsible
for man as he is, with all his unselfish devotion to
family, friends and country, all his pity and sym-
pathy with the weak, all his idealism and belief in
the unseen, as well as for those brute-instincts which
are perhaps too often forgotten by sanguine
reformers. We are not committed to a hopeless
struggle against Nature. The Power which im-
planted the higher instincts in us is able to satisfy
them out of its own stores. There is a great deal of
instinctive devotion and self-sacrifice among the
lower animals. The true inference from the study
of Nature’s ways is not Schopenhauer’s pessimism,
but the recognition that since self-sacrifice is a law
of Nature, selfishness is everywhere bankrupt and
foredoomed to final failure.

2IX

^ ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

I believe then that Science, the latest revelation
of God, has much to teach us in morals ; though we
need not suppose that inanimate Nature is a deeper
revelation of the will of the Creator than the mind of
man, which an old writer said is “ the throne of the
Godhead.” God’s dwelling, says Wordsworth
is “ in the light of setting suns ” — in the
external world — “ and in the mind of man.” If
Science, which is advancing from one victory to
another, and which enlists in its service the keenest
intellects and the most disinterested characters of
our time, should so far extend its prestige as to
influence the judgments which the man in the street
forms upon conduct, what changes in public opinion
may we expect ?

(1) In religion, which is closely connected with
morals, Science may speak doubtfully about the
existence of a personal God. But it will not allow
us to believe that, if there is a personal God, He is
either a capricious Oriental Sultan, to be approached
only through His privileged courtiers, or a magnified
Schoolmaster, or the Head of the clerical profession.
Sir John Seeley said that the man of science has a
nobler conception of the Deity than the average
churchgoer, and I think he was right.

(2) The scientific spirit has already established

a more exacting standard of truthfulness in history

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SCIENTIFIC MORALITY

and in controversy. Reckless statements and
misrepresentations of opponents are less common,
except perhaps in religious and political disputes,
where truthfulness is most important. But it has
been said that even the axioms of Euclid would be
disputed if men were sufficiently interested in
denying them.

(3) We may hope that the scientific standard of
evidence will banish into limbo those nebulous half-
beliefs which we call superstitions. How often we
meet otherwise intelligent persons who will not dine
in a party of thirteen, or be married in May ; who
will “ touch wood ” if they have said anything
“ unlucky,” walk round a ladder, and show respect
for other equally silly fancies. They do not really
believe them, but “ there may be something in it,”
so they keep on the safe side. To the same category
belong all the half silly, half fraudulent cults of
miraculous healing and necromancy. No one with
any tincture of the scientific spirit could believe that
God (if he believes in God) is the kind of person to
punish a man for violating such ridiculous taboos as
those just mentioned ; and we may hope that the
whole subject of healing by suggestion will soon be
taken out of the hands of quacks, lay and clerical,
and placed on a scientific basis. The laws of
medical psychology are still very imperfectly under-

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ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

stood, but knowledge is advancing rapidly. It
ought before long to be possible for a physician to
say quite definitely to a patient : “ Your trouble
is functional, not organic, and mainly hysterical ;
you can cure yourself if you will ” ; or else :
“ Nothing but surgery can help you.” Superstition
will die hard ; I have been much disappointed to
observe the recrudescence of it since the war ;
but if the scientific way of looking at things
prevails, the priests of Lourdes, the itinerant
“ missioners of healing,” and many humbler
practitioners of curious arts, will find their occupa-
tion gone.

(4) “ Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he
reap.” The New Testament insists plainly that law
and order govern the spiritual as well as the visible
world. Popular religion has frequently ignored this
truth. I have not space to give instances, but this
is another way in which the knowledge of Nature
may help to purify morality.

(5) In social reform qs in medicine modern
science teaches us to attack the causes of disease,
not the symptoms. We no longer advise a consump-
tive to wear a respirator and keep his windows shut ;
but our political remedies for social troubles are just
as absurd. Happily these problems are now some-
times tackled in a genuinely scientific temper.

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SCIENTIFIC MORALITY

(6) We may hope to see a new conscience
towards the “ so-called lower animals.’’ They are
literally our distant cousins. They were not created
for our use. They have as good a right on this planet
as we have ; and our treatment of them has been
abominable. We must continue to eat them ; no
one has so much interest in the demand foi pork as
the pig ; but I believe the opinion will grow rapidly
that field-sports are barbarous and degrading. Here
however I know that half my readers will disagree
with me.

(7) If the animals were not made for man,
neither was the rest of the world Within the last
hundred years the most civilised nations have been
busy in defacing the beauty of Nature, ravaging
its resources, exterminating some of its most
beautiful living species, and generally behaving like
ill-conditioned savages. Here again the morality
of science will speak in no uncertain tones. We are
trustees for a beautiful world, which we are doing
our best to spoil for all,future time.

(8) “ For all future time ! ” This is the gieat
quarrel between science and politics. Science has
no quarrel with the maxim, “ Seek the greatest
happiness of the greatest number,” but it reminds us
that the greatest number are not yet able to speak
for themselves. The politician remembers only that

2I 5

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS

the unborn have no votes ; science never forgets
that they have rights. So we come lastly to
eugenics, which in the future will be one of the most
important of all the sciences. When the laws which
regulate racial progress and degeneration are known,
woe to the nation that refuses to recognise them.
“ I am not in the habit of talking,” Plotinus makes
Nature say. No ; with her it is a word and a blow,
and the blow first.

2l6

24. PROGNOSTICATIONS

x. ‘The Shrinking Globe

B Y shrinkage I mean not the contraction of the
earth’s crust, of which geologists tell us,
but the abolition of distance by modern discoveries.
The circumference of the globe is about 25,000
miles, and we are beginning to think this distance
rather small. We can talk to each other more than
half across it.

The cinema has made civilisation, as the word is
understood at Los Angeles, Cal., an object of
admiration, as, Macaulay might have said, to the
yellow man as he plies his chopsticks in the odorifer-
ous alleys of Canton, to the black man in the
malarious swamps of Sierra Leone, and to the brown
man among the crowded ghats of Benares. A young
domestic servant recently “ finished ” at an L.C.C.
School, can probably tell us nothing whatever about
the Great War, but she will be eloquent about the
leading film “ stars ” and the gorgeous opulence of
the United States.

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Jg ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

We are delighted to hear that the Schneider
trophy has fallen to Great Britain. We may make
a rather poor show at Wimbledon, but our champion
can fly 35 miles faster in an hour than Signor.
Bernardi, who won the cup in 1926. We have
moved on rather quickly since Santos Dumont
established the record for 1906 with 25 miles an
hour. The first Schneider cup-winner was the
Frenchman, Prevost, in 1913, who covered 45 miles
in the hour. Since then the numbers have climbed
like those of the National Debt, and for the same
reason. Flying really became quite interesting
when it was a question of bombing the enemy’s
towns.

This invention may conceivably be digging a
grave for civilisation. That has happened before
when for a time the attack in war became over-
whelmingly stronger than the defence. In the
opinion of the “ Cambridge Medieval History ” it
was a mere accident that in the time of Jenghiz
Khan and his successors Rome and Paris did not
share the fate of Moscow and of Baghdad, where
800,000 corpses and a heap of ruins marked the site
of the second city in the world. On the other hand,
a squadron of aeroplanes could make short work of
a revolutionary mob.

But flying may bring great advantages in time of
318

THE SHRINKING GLOBE

peace, .especially to the British Empire, which (our
foreign critics used to tell us) was too much scat-
tered to hold together. In a few years we shall be
much nearer to Australia and New Zealand than
we were to Canada not long ago. The French
I believe, have already an air service to Senegal ;
we shall soon have regular communication by air
with South Africa. No part of the Empire will be
so distant that a settler need feel banished while he
lives there. The range of holiday travelling will be
extended almost incredibly. We may spend a
week-end at Athens or Constantinople, and a short
Easter vacation in India. The general effect should
be to accentuate a tendency which swift motoi-
traffic is already bringing about. The suburbs
of a great town will extend to a radius of fifty to a
hundred miles ; the city merchant may live in
Gloucestershire or Norfolk, or in Scotland, if he
does not mind a two or three hours’ flight to his
office. Rich Americans will buy country houses in
England, which they .will reach in one day from
Wall-street.

The result will probably be in favour of inter-
nationalism and friendship between different
peoples. Civilisation will become more uniform,
and ignorance of foreign countries less gross than
it is now. But it will not necessarily make us more

2 19

^ ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS «§£

civilised. Mallock, in his “ New Republic,” makes
a Philistine man of science say that a generation
which travels sixty miles an hour must be five times
as civilised as one which only travelled twelve.
By the same reasoning, the Europeans and
Americans of 1950 will be five times as civilised as
we were a few years ago. But this is nonsense.
“ Many shall go to and fro and knowledge shall be
increased,” says an Old Testament prophet. “ But
knowledge comes and wisdom lingers.” As a Ger-
man proverb says : “ A gosling flew over the Rhine
and came back a goose.” Leisure is necessary for
wisdom , and the faster we travel, the less leisure
we have — a paradox which it is not difficult to
explain.

Broadcasting has come so prosaically that we
hardly realise what an amazing invention it is, and
what momentous results will probably follow it.
l am told that the receiving licenses in this country
alone number 2,306,285 ; and it is reported that
there may be half a million more who are unlicensed.
Suppose that we were menaced with another war,
or a great national crisis when the Prime Minister
might wish to have a heart-to-heart talk with the
people. Already he could address at least three
million persons. It has been proved that a Govern-
ment censorship of broadcasting may be very

220

THE SHRINKING GLOBE

effective. The uses of this new discovery in edu-
cation have not yet been fully exploited. Good
music is already being popularised in this way ;
miscellaneous short lectures on every imaginable
subject are given to those who want information
in tabloid form but have never formed the habit of
reading. Good literature is read aloud by good
readers. Foreign languages can be taught more
easily if the pupil is able to pick up speeches from
the stations in France, Germany, Spain or Italy.
Even in religion there are large numbers who are
not in the habit of attending public worship but who
greatly appreciate listening to a well-rendered ser-
vice and an eloquent sermon on the “ radio.”
Whether the clergy altogether appreciate this
development may be doubted. No method of
taking a collection by broadcasting has yet been
discovered !

One effect of’ broadcasting will be to establish
a standard pronunciation of English. This will, on
the whole, be a good thing. Nothing keeps classes
apart so much as the fact that if a man has “ risen
from the ranks,” as the saying is, his speech bewrays
him for the rest of his life. He may have mastered
the standard usage in the matter of aspirates, which,
after all, is only the dialectical practice of that part
of England which has set the fashion, but he will

221

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

never talk English like a public school and uni-
versity man, and this defect is considered a stamp
of social inferiority- I do not know whether this
difference of pronunciation, according to social,
position, exists to the same extent in France or
Germany ; but I am sure that with us it is a great
obstacle to that social equality which we all desire
to promote. It is very undesirable that a man
should be known by his manner of talking, not as
a Yorkshireman or Devonian or Aberdonian — he
may very reasonably be proud of belonging to any
of these districts — but as belonging by birth to the
lower or lower middle class. We want to abolish
these names and the snobbishness which they
imply. A uniform pronunciation taught in the
schools (we may hope it will not be a modified
Cockney) will help in this direction. It will be a
pity to lose some of the old dialects, but I fear they
are going. One never hears now the unadulterated
North Riding Yorkshire of the village where I was
born.

The shrinkage of the world is going on so fast that
some have dallied with the idea of a future conquest
of other worlds. But the year 2,000 will find us still
confined to our own earth, and I do not think the
year 200,000 will have enlarged our boundaries.
It is not wholly impossible, as far as the distance
222

THE SHRINKING GLOBE

goes, that the moon, which is only 238,000 miles off,
might be reached ; but the other difficulties seem
to be insuperable. Our satellite no doubt contains
some fine goldfields, but I do not think that either
the Union Jack or the Stars and Stripes will ever
wave over those gaping volcanoes which we see
through a telescope. As for the other planets, it
seems utterly impossible that we shall ever reach
them. I do not know why Mars should be chosen
by our imaginative writers ; it is very small and
horribly cold. Venus is much more promising. It
is nearly the same size as our earth, so that we
should neither jump ten feet accidentally nor be
glued to the ground. It has probably a moist,
sticky atmosphere, with an equable temperature of
about 120 degrees. But the first ship-load of
immigrants would probably either be drowned or
eaten by dinosaurs. I believe we shall perforce
have to stay whSre we are.

The threatened discovery of television opens'
terrible possibilities. We should certainly need a
censorship then. An explorer who was com-
missioned to report of the manners and customs of
a savage tribe summed up his experiences by saying:
“ Manners they have none, and, as for their
customs, they are beastly.” And even nearer home

there may be sights unfitted for the young and

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^ ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

innocent. One more possibility remains,— that of
picking up past events. Why not ? I suppose they
still exist as waves in the ether, or something of that
kind. This is a pleasant prospect for guilty
consciences.

224

25. THE NEXT WAR

T HE results of the sham attack on London from
the air seem to show that, contrary to the
hopes of our experts, London cannot be successfully
defended. Within two or three hours of a declar-
ation of war — in the unlikely event of that formality
being observed — the destruction of the capital and
the massacre of its inhabitants will begin.

Among all the booklets of the brilliant “ To-day
and To-morrow ” series, none, I think, is so weighty
and impressive as Professor McDougall’s “ Janus,
or the Conquest of War.” It contains twice as
much matter as ihe other volumes, and instead of
the Puckish humour of some of the other contri-.
butors, it is profoundly serious.

The writer reviews,* not at all hopefully, the
various plans which have been made to prevent
another war. It is a commonplace that very few
people wanted war in 1914, and that still fewer want
it now, after the appalling experiences which
McDougall illustrates by poignantly touching

225 *5

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

anecdotes at first hand of the years 1914-1918.
He recalls how the very modest proposals' of the
nineteenth century for naval holidays, proportion-
ate reduction of armaments, and the like, were
rejected one after another. He reminds us how a
whole body of international law, intended to make
war more humane, was thrown on to the scrap-heap,
first by the Germans and then by the Allies.

He quotes at length from a terrible article written
in 1924 by Mr. Winston Churchill, to show what war
would have been like in 1919, and still more what
the next war will be like. “ Nations who believe
that their life is at stake will not be restrained from
using any means to secure their existence. It is
probable — nay certain — that among the means
which will next time be at their disposal will be
agencies and processes of destruction wholesale,
unlimited, and perhaps, once launched, uncontrol-
able.” Among these he names bombing aeroplanes
•guided automatically without a human pilot,
poison gas in far deadlier forms, and pestilences
methodically prepared and deliberately launched
upon man and beast. “ This study is certainly
being pursued in laboratories of more than one
great country.” I shall return to these predictions
presently.

Among the manifestly absurd or inadequate
226

T H £ NEXT WAR ^

explanations of the recurrence of wars are the
inherent wickedness of mankind, the special
depravity of emperors, kings, and other rulers not
elected by universal suffrage, and the desire of
armament manufacturers and profiteers to make
fortunes. Poor human nature is not so bad as
to enjoy killing and plundering for their own sakes.
Monarchies are not at all more bellicose and
aggressive than republics. Those who think other-
wise may profitably study the published letters of
Roosevelt and Senator Lodge. Roosevelt was
supposed to be rather more friendly to this country
than most _ American politicians ; but these letters
reveal him contemplating with satisfaction a war
against England, at a time when we had not given
the United States the slightest provocation. As for
the ambitions of profiteers and others we may feel
certain that nobody who has anything to lose will
lightly vote for another war.

Economic imperialism — the wish to secure mar-
kets and monopolies , .the pressure of population
upon the means of subsistence ; and bombastic
patriotism, are real causes which have promoted
wars in the past. But they are not likely to cause
another war, unless a threatened government
thinks that a successful war is its only chance of
escaping revolution. This was undoubtedly one of

2-7

X ASSESSMENTS and anticipations £

the causes of the Great War ; but the governments
which tried the experiment had one and all the most
bitter reasons to regret it. Germany was probably
misled also by the memory of her former wars,
especially that of 1870, which were actually made to
pay ; but nobody will dream again that a European
War can be profitable either to winners or losers.

We must, however, remember that there is one
diabolical government — that of Russia — which
would not shrink for a moment from massacring
three-quarters of the population of Europe, if the
remaining 25 per cent could be subjected to the
same miseries which they have inflicted on their own
people. The bitter truth must be spoken, that until
this nest of hornets has been smoked out, dis-
armament in Europe is impossible. Italy also is
said to be a menace to peace ; but in my opinion
Mussolini is only indulging in the ^dangerous game
of sabre-rattling ; a serious war would be too
perilous to himself.

I agree with McDougall - that fear is the real
cause of war. We must have often seen two dogs
approaching each other with bristling hair and
perhaps with wagging tails. Neither wants to
fight ; but when they meet they stand eyeing each
other nervously, until one of them flicks an ear

or twitches a leg, and in a moment they are at each

228

THE NEXT WAR

other’s^ throats. The proper remedy to work for is
the removal of fear. Or, as Lord Cecil puts it,
“What keeps alive armaments is one thing only
— the fear and suspicion of the nations for each
other.”

This clears the ground for discussing preventives.
Christianity no doubt offers a solution, but unhap-
pily the nations do not seem more disposed to listen
to the teaching of the Gospel now than they have
been in the past. Arbitration treaties are sometimes
useful, but not when two nations are vitally inter-
ested in getting something which only one of them
can have. If two men want the same woman, they
will never submit to arbitration the question which
of them shall have her. Nor will great nations
invite their neighbours to decide whether the
Moors or the Indians or the Filipinos are “ peoples
rightly struggling to be free.”

The Quakers' say, Disarm, and trust to the
decency of your neighbours not to plunder a
defenceless and obviously unaggressive people.
The fate of China, which actually adopted this
policy in the last century, is not very encouraging
to these idealists.

The proportionate reduction of armaments
bristles with difficulties. If a gambler who has won
a heavy stake says to his opponent : “ Now we will

--Q

Jg- ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

play for love for the rest of the evening,” the loser
is not likely to consent ; he wants, as he says, to
“ have his revenge.” This is very much the position
of the losers in the late War. It might have been
wiser, as well as more Christian, to treat them with
wholly unexpected generosity.

Internationalism and abolition of nationalities
are manifestly impossible. This idea commends
itself chiefly to those who, under cover of pacifism,
desire a murderous class-war.

Whether McDougalPs suggestion of an inter-
national air force, with a prohibition of national
air fleets, is feasible, I will not discuss. It is perhaps
one of the best suggestions yet made.

But I want to raise briefly another point. Is
it as certain as it is almost always assumed to be
that the next war will see a promiscuous massacre
of non-combatants, men, women, and children,
perhaps by poison ? Twenty years ago the veiy
suggestion of such a thing would have been received
with scorn. It was then .a- commonplace that
civilised people had advanced in humanity far
beyond even the comparatively high standard of
the eighteenth century. Yet here is a retrogression
to a point far behind even the Greeks and the
Romans. We have to go back to the Book of

Joshua for anything approaching in horror what

230

THE NEXT WAR

we are told to expect in the nex£ war ; and the
Jewish nose, which is not Bedouin, is a proof that
“ the people of the land ” were not really extermin-
ated as the ferocious chroniclers narrate. When
Plato lays down the laws of war for Greek States,
fruit trees are not to be injured, houses and temples
are not to be destroyed, the invader may take only
the standing crops, Greeks are not to be sold as
slaves. The massacre of non-combatants and the
poisoning of wells have always been practices quite
outside the limits of severity in civilised warfare.

It is alleged that modern wars are between
nations, not between armies, and that the distinc-
tion between combatants and non-combatants has
ceased to exist. This plea will not serve. The non-
combatant population has always worked to make
the continuance of the war possible ; it has always
done the work of the men who were called to the
colours ; it has always supplied food, clothes, and
munitions for the fighters, and tended the sick.
Nor is it true that the new methods of destruction
have made a great difference. It is as easy to kill
a child with a spear as with a poison-bomb ; but
such things “ are not done.” Barbarous and cruel
weapons have, as a matter of fact, not always been
used when they would have given military advan-
tage. The Greeks gave up the use of poisoned

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^ ASSESSMENTS ANI) ANTICIPATIONS ^

arrows, of which there are traces in Homer. . Dum-
dum bullets, which w r ere introduced in war with
the Afridis, who, it was said, could not be stopped by
Ordinary bullets, were barred by the rules of war.
Other examples could easily be found.

There is something radically wrong with a civilis-
ation which can thus deliberately return to the
worst traditions of savagery. Frankly, I do not
understand it, and I am amazed by the acquiescence
of the civilised world in this appalling and suicidal
relapse.

232

2 6. WHAT IS SUCCESS?

T HE word “ Success ” is written on the heart
of every good American, and floats as an
ideal before the minds of most young Englishmen.
“ Be Christians and you will be successful,” ex-
claimed the Principal of an American University to
his students. It does not sound quite like the
Beatitudes, but I daresay it helped the young men
who heard it to live cleanly, to shun smuggled wood-
alcohol, to work hard and render efficient “ social
service.” There are many young people who are
the better for bejng told that success is within their
reach. Nothing distresses an English College tutor
more than to see the young man with two talents
preparing his napkin' to hide them in. Ambition
may be the last infirmity of noble minds ; but it is
a splendid spur for the average man. This is why
the Americans deliberately try to engender the
superiority complex. The subject of it is some-
times a rather intolerable person ; but he is
ostentatiously happy, and he gets things done.

233

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

But what is Success ? We know what .Samuel
Smiles meant by it. The good apprentice comes up
to London with half a crown in his pocket. By
unremitting attention to his humble duties he win,
the confidence of his employer, becomes a partners
marries his employer’s daughter, and dies a peer
and a millionaire. This is Success, tangible and
incontrovertible.

A Prime Minister is also unquestionably a success-
ful man. A judge, an archbishop, a field-marshal,
a “ best-seller,” is admitted to have been successful,
in his own line. He would probably, most people
suppose, have preferred to be a millionaire or a
Prime Minister, if he had known how to do it, but
he has played his cards well. There are no doubt
other ways of spending one’s life, which some
people find attractive. But the world does not
speak of Success in connection with them. Robert
Browning thought that the grammarian, who spent
his life over the niceties of Greek syntax, had
resolved to win “ heaven’s success or earth’s
failure,” and that he therefore exclaimed once for
all, to achieve a horrible rhyme, “ Hence with life’s
pale lure.” I have known several grammarians ;
I once wrote a Latin grammar myself ; and I fear
they are simply creatures of habit. They have no
visions of unfading crowns ; they would be miser-

234

WHAT IS SUCCESS I

able if they were separated for a day from their
desks and their books.

Most people would assent to the saying that
happiness is “ our being’s end and aim ” ; and yet,
curiously enough, they do not identify Success with
happiness. If they did they would have to revise
their standards of Success rather drastically. It has
been said that the happy man has the best of reasons
for being happy, namely, the fact that he is so.
They may be true ; but the contented man is
severely handicapped in the race of life. He who
wants nothing will get nothing. Ambition is
occasionally the luxury of the fortunate, but it is
more often the consolation of the unhappy. Bor-
row in “ Lavengro ” would even have us believe that a
tendency to mental depression may be a man’s
best friend. “ Thou wouldst be joyous, wouldst
thou ? Then be a fool. What great work was ever
the result of joy* the puny one ? Who have been
the wise ones, the mighty ones, the conquering ones
of the earth ? The joyQus ? I believe it not.”

The biographies of the great on the whole confirm
Borrow’s opinion, though it may be too rhetorically
expressed. We generally find that in early life they
have been unhappy ; not merely impecunious and
driven to fight hard for their own hands, but
depressed and anxious beyond what the circum-

235

Jr ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

stances justified. And often, though, not always,
they have owned that the happiest period of their
lives was the time of their first struggles and quite
insignificant successes. Sometimes the big victories
have brought only disillusionment. They have done
something, but it was not what they meant to do.
Their bodily organisation, it may be, has broken
down under the strain ; or they have formed
habits which prevent them from enjoying success,
when it has come to them. We have met some
successful men who seem to be happy. They have
aimed at a rather low type of achievement, or after
beginning with nobler ambitions, they have come to
be content with the world’s honours, which they
have gained. But no one could maintain that the
successful as a class are conspicuously happy.

Augustine Birrell, in one of the most famous of
his Obiter Dicta essays, declares that most great
men hate their greatness, because it is not of the
'kind which they most admire. Gray, an exquis-
itely finished poet and incidentally a college don,
would have liked to be a successful general, but he
wrote the Elegy in a Country Churchyard, and took
no Quebec. Wolfe did take Quebec, and while he
was doing it was heard to remark that he would
rather have written Gray’s Elegy. Carlyle, whose
motto was “ Blows, not words,” sang the praise of

236

WHAT IS SUCCESS?

silence in about thirty-six octavo volumes. Invalid
men of letters — cripples like W. E. Henley or con-
sumptives like Robert Louis Stevenson — let their
imaginations run riot in scenes of violence and
bloodshed. I think, however, that Mr. Birreil has
made an amusing point rather than proved a general
truth. Most great men have believed in the work of
their choice, whether active or artistic or contem-
plative.

Putting aside the test of happiness, which clearly
is no criterion, since those who have it seldom
become great, and those who become great have
either put happiness aside or are too busy to think
whether they are happy or not, we find other
troublesome questions waiting for an answer.

Why do we say, “ All’s well that ends well 55 ?
Why is the end of a man’s career more important
than the beginning ? Are we to call a man success-
ful who has spent an extremely strenuous and
uncomfortable life in the pursuit of power or place
or riches, and who at last gains his object only to
have the cup snatched from his lips by death,
disablement, or domestic misfortune ? Was St.
Paul not a successful man, because he was
beheaded ? Or Napoleon, because he died at
St. Helena ? Or Raphael and Mozart, because

their lives were cut short at thirty-six ? Two men

237

Jg; ASSESSMENTS AND A N TI C I P VTO I N S

are in love with the same woman. One of them
seizes her , the other writes a Vita Nuova about her.
Which is the successful lover ? Beatrice’s husband
probably found her a very ordinary young woman ;
Dante possessed the ideal Beatrice, with Gemma
Donati to satisfy his less spiritual needs. How-
ever we may answer this last question, the saying,
“ Call no man successful before he dies,” will not
work. Many men have died rather early, and some
rather miserably, after putting to their credit some
great achievement for which posterity owns itself
in their debt.

The question of posthumous fame as an ingredient
in success remains rather difficult. Rogers believed
himself a great poet, and thoroughly enjoyed his
reputation ; he is now forgotten. If Wordsworth
had died at fifty, he would have received scarcely
any recognition in his lifetime ; he is now secure
on his pedestal. The French Millet had not enough
to eat ; the English Millais made .£30,000 a year.
Which is the more successful, the painter of The
Angelus , or the painter of the very creditable
canvases which found so ready a market ?

These problems, which cannot be solvea with
any precision, should lead us to look for a less
external standard of success than those which we
have suggested while following Samuel Smiles, a

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WHAT IS SUCCESS?

prophet of whom in these socialistic days we are
becomirfg ashamed. Success, we shall agree, is
something that a man is or becomes, not something
that he takes or gets. We are brought back to the
Old question whether it is better to be or to seem,
which Socrates discusses in the first book of
Plato’s Republic. His conclusion of course is that
it is better to be just than to be thought so, even
if the pretender dies loaded with honours, and the
truly just man, after suffering every kind of ill-
usage is — crucified. To read that sentence, written
in the fourth century before the Christian era, helps
us to understand what Nietzsche meant when he
said that Plato was a Christian before Christ. To be
successful is to have made a right use of our life ;
to ask what we have got by it is irrelevant.

This new criterion will make some of Smiles’s
heroes, and some of the men whom Lloyd George de-
lighted to honour, look rather foolish. The ct self-
made ” man, as an American said, thereby relieves .
the Almi ghty of a very heavy responsibility. His
success, on inspection, turns out to have been too
dearly bought. Bacon, who was not too scrupulous
himself, writes : “ The rising unto Place is laborious;
And by Paines men come to greater Paines; And
it is sometimes Base ; And by Indignities men come
to Dignities. The standing is slippery, and the

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ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS <§£

Regresse is either a downfall, or at least an Eclipse,
which is a Melancholy Thing.” The risk of a fall,
however, is not the chief evil. Climbing and
crawling are performed in much the same attitude.

It is astonishing how easily acts of baseness, if
they are not discovered, are forgotten. The
passions of youth, and the ambitions of middle age,
grant dispensations more readily than the most
courtly father confessor. The things that pinch
the conscience of the man of the world are his
miscalculations and his gaucheries, not his pre-
meditated crookednesses. But sins that are for-
gotten are not therefore forgiven ; they are just
the sins which are not forgiven. When- a man has
acted meanly and profited by it, his sense of values
is perverted ; a double heart, as a seventeenth-
century divine says, makes a double head. The
whole character of the successful worldling suffers
a fatty degeneration ; it becomes vulgar, narrow
. and uninteresting. The Psalmist speaks of men to
whom God gives their desire, and sends leanness
withal into their souls. A “lean soul in an overfed
body is an unlovely spectacle, and not an unusual
one.

But even if the conscience is not blunted by
ignoble arts, the successful career is often an unjust
and anti-social one. How large a part of success

240

WHAT IS SUCCESS?

consists in choosing a line of work which by some
accident is overpaid ; in seizing an advantageous
position, such as a temporary monopoly , in appro-
priating profits which cannot be said to have been
earned ; in tripping along unencumbered, while
others have to carry the heavy baggage ! It is this
kind of social injustice which rouses the indignation
of the less fortunate ; and we can hardly deny that _
this kind of success is more praised, envied and
sought after than it should be. The man himself
may not see that his career is open to criticism ;
but this crass kind of success is not good for the
character. We can see that even without the
warnings ‘in the Gospels. Outside the field of
commerce, very much of what the world calls
success is won by adroitly annexing the credit which
belongs to someone else, or which should be shared
among many. Socrates’s dilemma, to be or to
seem, probes very deeply when w r e examine the
foundation of what we usually consider success.

But another question suggests itself. If success
consists in making the' most and best of our natural
gifts, how is it compatible with specialisation, and
who can do anything great without specialising ?
We may envy the harmoniously developed man,
with his numerous interests, but these are not the
men to whom the world owes most. It would be

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ASSESSMENTS 'VND ANTICIPATIONS

delightful to be a Sir John Lubbock, keen about
everything from bees to banking, or an Andrew
Lang, who could write equally well on golf and on
folklore, besides translating Homer. But did not
even the greatest of all universal geniuses, Leonardo
da Vinci, fritter away some of his unrivalled talents
by trying too many things and leaving them un-
. finished ? My view about specialising is that if the
object be mean, selfish or unworthy, the success
won by concentration has to be paid for, and at a
high price. The character is warped, cramped and
stunted. But when a man deliberately resolves to
limit himself for the sake of some worthy task to
which he conceives himself to be specially called,
the sacrifice is not so great as it appears to be, nor
so great as he was willing to make it. The eternal
values, Goodness, Truth and Beauty, overlap one
another, so that by faithfully following one of
them, as the saint or the scientific worker or the
artist does, we do not wholly forfeit what we might
have learned from the other two. Every noble
endeavour takes on a kind of universality, so that a
broad mind is not much cramped by a narrow
sphere. We penetrate further towards the heart
of things by learning one subject thoroughly than
by acquiring a smattering of many.

It is a truism that there can be no success without
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WHAT IS SUCCESS

a unitary purpose in life. But most people have
none. Men may be divided into those who have
a plan for their lives, and those who have none.
The plan may be a mean one — enough has been
said of this ; but those who have no purpose at all
swell the ranks of the unsuccessful. It is less of a
truism to add that for those who have an ideal it is
not the attainment of the purpose that makes
success. “ Everyone may win who tries, for the
struggle is the prize.” Success, for the man with an
ideal, is nothing external, which chance may give
and chance take away. It is no definite limited
achievement, which we can enjoy or forget when we
have won ’it. It is a growing and expanding life,
which because it is spiritual in its nature, stretches
into infinity, far beyond our knowledge, and even
beyond our desire. The beatified spirit, in the
words of Plotinus, is “ always attaining and always
aspiring.” Or ill the more familiar words of St.
Paul, “ I count not myself to have apprehended
but one thing I do ; forgetting those things that
are behind, and reaching forward to those things
which are before, I press toward the mark for the
prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
There can be no boredom in such a life.

There can be no boredom; but failure is an
ingredient in this kind of success. “ Our business

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ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

in this world,” wiote Stevenson, “is not to succeed,
but to continue to fail in good spirits.” He sug-
gested for his epitaph, “ Here lies one who meant
well, tried a little, failed much,” or “ There goes
another faithful failure.” Browning’s develop-
ment of this thought in Rabbi Ben Ezra is too well-
known to quote. I will transcribe instead a few
lines by the schoolmaster-poet, T. E. Brown : —

“ The man, that hath great griefs I pity not ;

’Tis something to be great

In any wise, and hint the larger state,

Though but the shadow of a shade, God wot.

To him the sorrows are the tension-thrills
Of that serene endeavour
Which yields to God for ever and for evei
The joy that is more ancient than the hills ”

Have I been too homiletic ? Then let me in
conclusion come back to earth, and ask what is
the type of a successful life, not Strictly from the
religious point of view, but taking a higher and more
rational standard than that of Samuel Smiles.
Christ, in his encomium of John the Baptist, im-
plied that a great prophet is the greatest of all
men born of women. So be it ; but the prophet is
a man inspired, and the Spirit bloweth where it
listeth. Next to a great religious genius, what
is the most thoroughly satisfying type of success?

244

WHAT IS SUCCESS?

X

If we are young enough to choose our line in life,
how shall we set about it ? First, we must choose
some worthy and congenial task, the partial fulfil-
ment of which may be within oui reach. “ Blessed
is he who has found his work,” says Carlyle ; “ let
him seek no other blessedness.” Then, we must
devote ourselves to it, making our work our play,
as any noble work may be and ought to be. An'
excellent example of a life wisely planned is that
of a not wholly admirable character, Gibbon the
historian. His immortal history was just within
the compass of his genius , he had just time to
finish it, and he finished it. But even more en-
viable, it seems to me, are the lives of men like
Charles Darwin, Sir Francis Galton, and Pasteur.
There is no finality about scientific discovery ; the
very greatest men, even a Newton and a Darwin,
are proved in ^ime not to be infallible. But we
have argued that finality is no part of success.
The man who has advanced the frontiers of know-
ledge has done all that a man can do in one life.

More insecure and ephemeral are the achieve-
ments of the great “ practical ” men, the men of
action, like Julius Csesar, Napoleon and Bismarck.
Their methods certainly, and their aims probably,
are less pure than those of the scientific discoverers
and men of learning. The voice of the people

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ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

would place them far above the students and
thinkers ; but so would not I. Such men usually
take out of the common stock more than they put
in, and they cause a great deal of human suffering.
The time may come when our pei verse fellow-men
will come to honour their benefactors more than
their destroyers and plunderers, and will think a
skilled craftsman more worthy of respect than an
Emperor Napoleon, or a “ Napoleon of finance.”
But this would involve such revolutionary changes
in our estimates of success that I shrink from
following up the subject any further.

246

2 ’]. IN THE LIMELIGHT

T HE democratic man is a species of ape, whose.

strongest instinct is gregariousness. He
likes to be in the middle of a noise and a crowd, and
to be seen in the middle of them. Be an average
man, and you are sure of being always in the
majority. Enter in by the broad gate, and you
will have plenty of company on the road. Don’t
be a pioneer : it is the early Christian that is got by
the lion.

The art of success in a democratic society is to
know how to play upon the ape in humanity. “ Let
the ape and tiger die,” said Tennyson. If the tiger
is dead, so much the better ; but now the ape has
it all its own way. Nearly all the large fortunes
now are made by supplying the standardised
luxuries of the masses — cinemas, cigarettes, silk
stockings, chocolates, cheap motor-cars, and the
like. Mass-production and mass-consumption are
the notes of the age we live in. And everywhere

we find the cult of publicity.

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In America there are professorships of sales-
manship, which means the art of making people
buy what they do not want. The psychology of the
human ape is being studied there with every
scientific refinement.

The same art is applied to politics. Rabindranath
Tagore, the Indian prophet and mystic, was
-naturally horrified by what he saw in America.
Democracy “ makes a deliberate study of the dark
patches of the human intellect, wherewith to help
itself to create an atmosphere of delusion through
hints, gestures, yells and startling grimaces, for the
purpose of stupefying the popular mind. . . . Once,
when I was in Chicago, I saw everywhere on the
town walls one single name blazoned in big letters
in an endless round of repetition, like the whirlwind
monotony of a dervish dance that dazes one’s mind
into vacuity. Evidently the name belonged to
some candidate for political election. But what an
insult to the people, who are supposed to represent
the supreme power in their government, openly to
apply to them the spell of hypnotism in place of
reason, as the medicine man does in the heart of
Africa.”

No privacy is sacred to the ape-mind. The
democratic newspaper is full of gossip about in-
dividuals — details which could have no interest

248

IN THE LIMELIGHT

whatever for any educated person, and often of a
kind which any person of refinement must dislike
extremely, when he or his family is the victim.
There are ghouls in society who listen to private
conversations, even in clubs, and send them at
once to the newspapers. From time to time a book
of reminiscences appears which is full of violations
of privacy and breaches of confidence. The dis-
tressing thing about these books is that they are
sometimes written by men and women who ought
to have some self-respect and sense of honour.

Character-sketches of the living are another way
of gratifying the vulgar taste for personalities, and
perhaps of advertising those who desire publicity.

I have had several such sent to me about myself —
I would have nipped them all in the bud if I had
known how. A few of them contained nothing but
vulgar insolence ; I have a list of the worst offen-
ders, but it is generally a mistake, especially for a
clergyman, to retaliate. More often they are in-
correct and irritating, but not offensive. The
“ Gentleman with a Duster ” was very laudatory ;
and Mr. Raymond (Mr. E. R. Thompson), the late
editor of the Evening Standard , positively made me
blush, for the last time, by describing me as a sort
of John the Baptist, “ entirely indifferent to money,
food, and society.” I am quite willing to bear that

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ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS

character ; perhaps I ought to be like that, but
I am not.

Ought a man to have a copyright in his own face ?
And should he not be able to get damages for an un-
usually frightful photograph ? A great deal may
be done by tilting the camera. The result is much
funnier than the extremely vulgar caricatures which
are now so popular. Our beloved Sovereigns are
snapshotted every day in attitudes which would
justify an impeachment for petty treason ; they
do not seem t@ mind. Even small people are
pursued by cameras, and if the victim evades the
focus, the photographer can get even with him, as
I have just suggested. When I was in America at
least half-a-dozen cameras were levelled at me at
every railway-station. I must add that the opera-
tors were very civil and apologetic ; they had the
time-honoured excuse of “ II faut vivre.” Still, the
thing is a nuisance. There are still some who agree
with our great lexicographer, who in his best
Johnsonese remarked : “ Sir,, among the anfrac-
tuosities of the human mind I know not if it may
not be one that there is a superstitious reluctance
to sit for a picture.” I fancy that if Dr. Johnson
were among us now he would have threatened
the camera-fiend with a formidable cudgel, as the

O’Gorman Mahon is said to have once intimidated

250

a Punch artist whom he found sketching him in the
House of Commons . “ Sorr, if that appears, I’ll
break every bone in your body ! ”

I feel much more seriously about the horrible
cruelty which this diseased craving inflicts upon
criminals and their families. I am no sentimen-
talist about capital punishment. The State has
the right to remove undesirable citizens, but it has
no right to humiliate them unnecessarily. The
attitude of the public on these occasions is to me
absolutely revolting. Murder trials ought to be
reported with decent reticence, remembering the
dreadful position of the accused ; and everyone who
is condemned to death ought to be allowed to carry
out the sentence upon himself, and to die, poor
fellow, like a gentleman. As things are, I do not
think we have any right to claim to be more
humane than the ancient Romans, who enjoyed
seeing an unfortunate criminal mauled by wild
beasts in the arena. At least, they did not regale
themselves by learning the name of the victim and
the circumstances of his family.

One who, like myself, has been, to some extent,
dragged into the limelight (not as a criminal, for-
tunately) must examine himself whether he would
prefer to be wholly ignored by the popular Press
and criticised only by his brother-scholars and men

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]$£ ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS «§£

of letters — the only people whose opinion -I care
twopence about.

It is rather convenient to be sure of a full church
when there is something I want to say in the pulpit ;
and I have already confessed that Mr. Raymond
made me blush by saying that I am absolutely
indifferent to filthy lucre. Against this must be
set rather frequent wounds to my self-respect when
people assume, not unnaturally, that I like being
talked about. On the whole, I hope I may have a
few years of complete retirement in my old age,
“ the world forgetting, by the world forgot.”

The remedy, no doubt, is my own hands. There
are three forms under which thought (like all
chemical substances) may be presented — solid,
liquid and gaseous. The third is for an audience,
the second for a book, the first only for professors
writing for (or at) each other. I have been a pro-
fessor, and I can write as solidly as any of them.
But I will not try this experiment on a long-
suffering editor.

252

28. THE INFERIORITY COMPLEX

T HAVE lately read that the fashionable disease
■1 changes about once every five years. “ In
1885 they had too much uric acid. In 1890 they
had chronic appendicitis. In 1895 they took the
Kneip water-cure. In 1915 they had all their
teeth extracted. In 1925 they have the infeiiority
complex. 51

Every discovery becomes ridiculous when the
man in the street gets hold of it. And in the latest
craze there is a balm for our wounded vanity. Why
are we neglected and obscure, while others, vulgar,
pushing fellows, 'force their way to the front ? It
is because of our unfortunate habit of self-deprecia-
tion. We used to hope that unobtrusive merit —
our own chief characte’ristic — would sooner or later
obtain just recognition. But no ! The world
persists in taking us at our own valuation, which is
absurdly and morbidly below our real worth.

So we go to a psycho-analyst or faith-healer,
who is charged to add a little wholesome bump-

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ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

tiousness to our composition. Instead of kneeling
uncomfortably by our beds and saying, “ God be
merciful to me a sinner,” we are advised by the
late M. Coue to snuggle under the blankets and
repeat several times, “ Every day and in all respects
I am getting better, wiser and handsomer.”

In America the cult of the superiority complex
is practised very systematically. The American’s
matutinal Swedish exercises are punctuated by
such ejaculations as “ Health ! Efficiency !
Success ! ” Stimulated by these incantations, he
goes out to a strenuous day’s work in an atmosphere
of keen competition. He probably makes more of
his life than the average Englishman, who too often
seems to have no plan at all. But it must be con-
fessed that, however agreeable to its possessor, the
superiority complex makes a man an exasperating
neighbour. The person who seems to be perpetually
congratulating himself on being what he is, without
•any visible ground for his extreme satisfaction, puts
those who associate with him into an uncharitable
state of mind.

The inferiority complex is certainly a fact. Per-
haps some of us have known a man who through the
whole of his youth, when he ought to have been
happy in anticipation of the adventure of life, was
convinced, or more than half convinced, that he

254

THE INFERIORITY COMPLEX ^

was a worm and no man, the very scorn of men and
the outcast of the people. Such little successes as
come his way do not dispel his obsession that he is
disliked and despised by everybody and that it
is no use trying.

Perhaps he is rescued at last by finding someone
who believes in him, and forthwith all is changed.
He begins to find out that if he wants anything
badly, within reasonable limits, he has only to
take it. He learns to respect himself, and to dis-
cover that other people respect him. So he no
longer views life through such deep-blue spectacles.
Acute self-depreciation is a misfortune of youth
rather than of middle age ; but it may last long
enough to blight the whole of a man’s career.

It is not always easy to recognise it in other
people. We see that they do not look happy, but
the cause is hidden from us. Sometimes the parents
will say, “ The boy has many faults, but he is
beautifully humble ” ; and they try not to spoil
his one Christian grace.. Good Christians are some-
times deplorably stupid in dealing with the young.

The word complex suggests a combination of
early influences, coming from outside, which have
given a twist to the character. Sometimes this is
the true diagnosis. An unsympathetic home ;
bullying at school ; one or two early failures ; an

255

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

unlucky love affair — such experiences, singly or
acting together, may lead to a settled self-con-
tempt, or a feeling that the world is irremediably
hostile. The victim shrinks into himself, and does
not find the sympathy which he never seeks. But
I am convinced that more often it is a form of
psychalgia — mind-ache, which arises chiefly from
physical causes. It is, in fact, the wisest treatment
to persuade the sufferer that the causes of his bad
opinion of himself are purely subjective, and un-
related to any facts in the real world. To give the
sympathy which at first seems not to be welcomed,
to encourage the self-tormentor even beyond what
we quite believe about him, are works* of charity
which do not cost much, and which may raise a
soul out of an unmerited purgatory.

We ought never to make the mistake of con-
founding the inferiority complex with Christian
humility. The old devotional books often encourage
this blunder. We are given to understand that the
humble man is he who utterly despises himself, who
never gives himself credit for any respectable
action, who invites other people to trample upon
him, and who loses no opportunity of mortifying
not his pride but his self-respect. Nothing can be
further from the humility which is recommended
in the New Testament. “Not to think of himself

256

3fc THE inferiority complex ^

more highly than he ought to think, but to think
soberly, according as God has dealt to every man
the measure of faith.” “ What hast thou that thou
didst not receive ? But if thou didst receive it,
why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received
it ? ” “ With me it is a very small thing to be

judged of you or of man’s judgment ; yea, I judge
not mine own self.”

There is a sturdy independence and robust com-
mon sense about these utterances. They will
encourage no man to think meanly of himself or
of his part in life. General Gordon wrote in his
diary very similar sentiments, though he gives them
a Calvinistic turn. “ If certain good works are
ordained to be brought forth by you, why should
you glory in them ? Do not flatter yourself that
you are wanted — that God could not work without
you. It is an honour if He employs you. No one
is indispensable in this world’s affairs or in spiritual
work. You are a machine, though allowed to feel
as if you had the power of work.”

Though the theologians of the cloister went so
far astray in their notion of humility, they were
very much alive to the consequences of the temper
which their teaching and manner of life must often
have encouraged. They placed “ Acedia ” on a
pillory among the seven deadly sins. Acedia was

257 17

jg- ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

a compound of depression, sloth and irritation,
“ the sin that is opposed to the joy of love,” as
Aquinas defines it. Chaucer speaks of it as “ the
rotten-hearted sin of Accidie.” We had forgotten
the name of this temptation till Bishop Francis.
Paget reminded us of it in a memorable essay.
To call it a deadly sin is perhaps to treat it too
seriously ; but St. Paul must have had something
of the sort in his mind when he speaks of the sorrow
of the world which worketh death. Spinoza also
passes unqualified condemnation on the habit of
unhappiness, which he calls tnstitia. Dante pic-
tures the victims of Acedia as immersed in a morass,
because they had found nothing interesting or
delightful on this beautiful earth.

It seems harsh to visit with moral censure a
state of mind which no one would choose volun-
tarily ; but there may be some people who would
be benefited by being told brusquely not to put
down their depression to their nerves or their livers,
still less to circumstances over which they have no
control, but to fight against it as an unmanly sin.
After all, self-centredness must have much to do
with it. As the saintly Bishop Wilson said, when
there is so much that wants doing, it is foolish to
sit down on our own little handful of thorns.

But I believe there are many people with whom

258

X THE inferiority complex ^

the inferiority complex has been the secret of their
success in life. It has made them grim fighters and
furious workers. The naturally contented seldom
do much in the world. They have what they want
already. In a few cases ambition may be the
luxury of the fortunate. A duke may exert himself
in moderation to get the Garter, or a rich man to
get a title. But more often it is the consolation and
distraction of those who want to escape from their
own thoughts, and to secure themselves against the
consequences of their fancied inferiority.

I fancy that many misers are men of this type.
“ The populace hisses me,” as Horace makes one of
them say*; “but I applaud myself, when I con-
template my bank-balance.” Jay Gould, that most
unpopular of American financiers, found every
man’s hand against him when he started in life ,
so he determined to fight the world alone, and in a
dismal sense he won.

So the inferiority complex, like other infirmities,-
may be turned to profitable account. But since
it can never make a man either loving 01 beloved,
it is a most undesirable possession for a life-time.
In youth it may actually be a great advantage ;
for its victim, believing himself to be unlike other
people, will strike out a line for himself, unless in-
deed he falls prey to Acedia. He may acquire the

259

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

temper and habits which lead to great success ;
after which, if he is lucky, he outgrows his habit of
self-depieciation, and begins to see himself as
others see him.

Looking back on one’s own life, one can see how .
many odd strands have been woven into the result,
which we contemplate with a wry face, yet not
without much thankfulness. One of these strands
may have been that plague of self-tormenting,
which, though invisible on the stage where we live
in the sight of the world, has acted out a shadowy
and rather pitiful tragedy behind the scenes.

260

29- WORK

W HEN our first parents were driven out of
Paradise, Adam is believed to have
remarked to Eve : “ My dear, we live in an age of
transition.” The chief feature of the change was
that henceforth Adam and his descendants had to
work for fheir living.

Was this really a punishment ? There are still
a few isles of the Lotus Eaters, where food grows
wild. Their inhabitants have remained savages.
Kingsley in his “ Water Babies ” condemns those
who have migrated from the land of Hard-Work
to the land of Ready-Made to a still heavier
fate — they climb up their ancestral tree and
become apes once -more. I have already twice
quoted Carlyle’s words about the blessing of
finding one’s work in life. Many others have
said the same thing. To put it at its lowest, hard
work keeps us out of mischief. “ A man is seldom
so harmlessly occupied,” said Dr. Johnson, “ as

when he is making money.”

261

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

Some Christians have felt it to be a difficulty
that Christ says so little about the blessing of work.
The German pietists tried to make out that though
the Gospels are silent on the subject, Jesus must
have been really the best carpenter, the best”
scholar, the best judge, and so on, who ever lived.
They meant well, but in truth it is not easy to find
the modern ideal of efficiency in the Gospels. And
at least one terrific worker, the great scholar Har-
nack, has been honest enough to say : “ There is a
great deal of hypocritical twaddle talked about
work. Three-fourths of it and moie is nothing but
stupefying toil, and the man who really works hard
shares the poet’s aspirations as he looks forward to
evening : ‘ Head, hands and feet rejoice ; the work
is done.’ I have found (he adds) that the people
who talk loudest about the pleasure of work are
not very laborious themselves.”

Civilisations have hitherto been based on the
assumption that people in general will not work
unless they are either bribed or threatened. Am-
bition is a motive for the few, being (as I have said)
either the luxury of the happy or the anodyne of
the wretched. In a slave-state the alternative for
the majority is “ work or be whipped.” Under
competitive industrialism it is “ work or starve.”

And yet this is not and never has been a true
262

estimate of human nature. At all times and in all
places there have been men and women who have
worked neither for fear nor favour, but because they
love either their work or their fellow-men or their
God. In every society there is a large number of
citizens who preserve civilisation from the cor-
ruption which corrodes every institution the mem-
bers of which work unwillingly, for fear of punish-
ment or hope of reward. There are traditions of
disinterested service in some professions. Soldiers
in war-time undergo every kind of hardship, and
incur the greatest risks, for a bare pittance. It was
a commonplace ten years ago to say that if the spirit
of the trenches could be imported into civil life, our
social problems would easily be solved.

There are other professions in which there is a
high standard of professional honour. We cannot
imagine public school-masters striking in the middle
of a term, or doctors during an epidemic. Scholars
and men of science would never consent to an
eight-hour day , they work for much more than
eight hours, for rewards which are sometimes too
small to be calculated. Perhaps, like Harnack,
they are glad when the day’s work is over ; but
for all that, their work is really their play, and
their play mere recreation, grudgingly accepted for
the sake of health. Life would be intolerable to

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them if they were forbidden to work, and to work
harder than any wage-earnei is allowed to work.

Besides this there are very many persons in every
class of life (for I am not claiming superiority for
the class to which I happen to belong) who habitu-
ally work as if they loved it, without attempting
to reckon whether they are taking out of the com-
mon stock a full equivalent for what they put in.
We find such men and women in every rank, in
every trade and business. They are the salt which
keeps society from putrefaction ; they are also
those who find happiness in their work.

If this is true, what are we to say to such tirades
as the following, which I quote from a socialist
newspaper. (I will not name the writer ; he is a
man who ought to have known much better.)
“ Do not let any of us be blind to the fact that most
men and women simply hate the ordinary forms of
labour, and flee from manual labbui as from the
'plague as soon as opportunity offers. The cant
which the politicians, parsons and others are
always preaching, that labour is a blessed thing, is a
lie. God and nature gave men brains for the pur-
pose of easing life and making our sojourn on earth,
not a time of worry and discomfort, but of peace
and happiness.” So Mr. Bertrand Russell, quoted
in Dr. Jacks’ “ Constructive Citizenship,” says :

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WORK

£

“ It is .very rare that a man has any spontaneous
impulse to the work which he has to do. He works
for the sake of the pay. The best we can hope for
is to diminish the amount. Four hours’ boredom
- a day is a thing which most people could endure
without damage.”

This kind of teaching seems to me absolutely
deadly, even apart from the fact that our foreign
rivals have no objection to eight hours “ boredom.”
I think we should find our twenty hours of un-
trammelled leisure a good deal more boring than
the four hours of work, even if the four hours were
spent, as my first quotation suggests, in cursing
and swearing and thinking of the way to the nearest
cinema or public-house,. No healthy civilisation
can ever be reared on a foundation of devitalised
work.

The error seems to be largely in substituting the
ideal of “ happiness,” most basely conceived as
freedom from discomfort, and frivolous mental
excitation, for the. joy of creativeness, in great
things or in small, which is equally natural to man.
Dr. Jacks quotes the inscription on a Mohammedan
astrolabe, more than a thousand years old, as an
example of the spirit of a good craftsman. “ The
astrolabe is the work of Hussein Ali, mechanic and
mathematician and servant of the Most High

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ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

God.” This mechanic found his pride and happiness
in what he did when he was on duty, not on what he
did when he was off duty.

What are the things that make work pleasant, ,
and what are the things that make it disagreeable ?

Putting aside the question of remuneration, which
is outside the work itself, the first requisite is that
the work shall be interesting. This may seem an
impossible requirement, but I do not think it is so.
Whenever we put all our energies into our work, it
becomes interesting. When I was a young man,
the Headmaster of Eton commissioned me to write
a Latin Grammar for the upper forms of the school.
There are few who would say that the niceties of
Latin syntax — the forms ^of the conditional sen-
tence and the rules of oratio obliqua — are an in-
teresting subject ; but I became quite keen about
them before I had finished. Whenever there are
difficulties to be solved interest is Easily awakened.
But no doubt there must be also the conviction
that the work is worth doing. . Nobody ought to be
set to the making of useless luxuries, in which the
toil of weeks may be consumed in an hour ; such
tasks are degrading, however well they may be
paid.

Next comes the delight of creating something
which we believe to be beautiful, or know to be

266

useful— the joy of good craftsmanship, which I am
afraid is threatened by all-pervading machinery
and mass-production.

• Last and most important is love or goodwill.
'Within the family there is an immense amount of
unpaid labour, sweetened by affection. In pro-
fessions which evoke and demand loyalty, such as
the Army and the Church, men shrink from no
sacrifice and keep no accounts of giving and taking.
Where there is no love and loyalty between em-
ployers and employed, but only what Carlyle calls
the cash nexus, there is sure to be endless friction.

To sum.up. Labour is distasteful, not only when
it is inadequately paid, but when the workman
thinks that his work is being wasted ; when it is
so far mechanised that it is not work for an in-
telligent man ; and, above all, when the mind
is poisoned by envy and hatred.

If I am right, the social problem is more psycho-
logical than political or economic. Legitimate dis-
content with the conditions of labour ought to be
remedied, even at the cost of slightly diminished
production. But the preachers of class enmity
are the worst enemies of society, and the preachers
of love and loyalty and goodwill are its best
friends. The duty of the Church towards indus-
trialism is indirect, but none the less important.

ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

Its message may be summed up in the words, “ The
Kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but
righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.”
Accept this, and most of our difficulties will soon-
adj'ust themselves

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30. EPICURUS AND HIS CRITICS

W HO are the happy people ?

Some will say that the question is
impossible to answer — that we do not know who is
happy and who is unhappy. “ The heart knoweth
its own bitterness, and a stranger doth not meddle
with its joy.” But I think we can answer for our-
selves. Tt may be true that we were never so
happy or so unhappy as we think we were. But I
think we know what we mean by happiness, and
whether we have a balance or a deficit in that bank.
My own recollection is that in some years I was
on the right side, in others on the wrong. I
have had a good many troubles, most of which,
never happened, and on the whole I have a com-
fortable but not a large balance to my credit.
Whether this experience is normal I do not know.

Since I think I know what happiness means, I
am not much interested in the endless discussions
of philosophers about it. It is at any rate a state
of mind ; what we actually feel, not what we ought

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ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

to feel. We do not envy a lunatic who thinks
himself Alexander the Great ; but if he enjoys being
Alexander the Gieat we cannot deny that he is
happy.

All self-respectmg philosophers heave bricks at
Epicurus, who taught that pleasure is the supreme
good. His followers are now called Hedonists, and
moralists direct all their heavy artillery upon them,
arguing not only that they are bad citizens, for
not realising that “ life is real, life is earnest,” but
that they are stupid people, who miss the things
that they aim at and hit nothing else.

We are told that to aim directly at pleasure is
the safest way not to obtain it ; and also that since
pleasures cannot be added up, and perish in the
enjoyment of them, the Epicurean must be always
disappointed. I cannot see that all this is true. I
do not want to add up my pleasures, but it is
quite easy to balance them against pains. They
do not perish in the enjoyment of them ; it gives
me great satisfaction to remember that at certain
times I was perfectly happy: And if it is true that
to aim directly at pleasure is not the way to hit it,
our Epicurean usually has sense enough to know
this ; he aims not directly at pleasure, but at
things which he knows will bring him pleasure.

I am not thinking of the sensualist ; the Epi-
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EPICURUS AND HIS CRITICS ^

cureans _ were not sensualists. They lived very
simply ; the pleasure which they ranked highest
was comradeship or friendliness. They bade dull
care begone, and summed up their practical
philosophy in the following quatrain, which in
Greek is only eight words : — “ Nothing to fear in
God. Nothing to feel in death. Good — easily won.
Evil — easily borne.”

Now if a man is naturally easy-going and unam-
bitious ; if he does not believe that the world is
out of joint, still less that he was born to set it
right, I do not say that he has a noble character, but
I think he is generally happy. I have known some
genuine Epicureans, and they are such pleasant
friends that I cannot grudge them their unheroic
satisfactions. It is very restful to associate with a
man who has no axe of his own to grind, and who
enjoys all the little comedies of life as they come,
for their own sake and not as they affect himself.
He is a much more agreeable fellow than the Stoic,
who assists you in your troubles with an entirely
unfeeling benevolence'; than the social reformer,
who worries you about your duties to the “ social
organism,” when all you can see is a network of
organisations (not organisms), each of which has a
limited and not very clearly defined claim upon
you ; than the ambitious man, who transfixes you

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Jjr ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

with his gimlet eyes to see whether he can make any
use of you ; or than the Catholic, who regards you
as an object on which to practise some meritorious
and distasteful Christian virtue.

I remember one perfect specimen of an Epicurean
among my colleagues when I was a college don. He
wasted great abilities ; but we were all uncom-
monly sorry when he left us, and I sincerely hope
he was much happier than he deserved to be, for he
added to the happiness of us all.

Of course, I have been speaking as a devil’s
advocate. It is better to be a Stoic than an Epi-
curean, and better to be a Christian than a Stoic.
But the arguments commonly used by moralists do
not please me. They introduce moral valuations
to weight the scales against Hedonism, and then
they say that even if we adopt pleasure as our
standard, the Epicuiean misses it. I am not at all
sure that he does. What they really want to prove
is that the high-minded unselfish man makes the
best of both worlds. It is pleasant to think, as
Renan says, that even if our religious beliefs have
no foundation, “ we have not been wholly duped.”

But this will not do. If we decide to choose the
higher life, we must make up our minds that the
question of our own happiness is irrelevant. We
must be willing to make a real sacrifice, without any

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Jg- EPICURUS AND HIS CRITICS ^

arriere fense'e that it is after all a good investment.
If life is, as Havelock Ellis suggests, a kind of
ritual dance, a refined Epicureanism may be the
truest philosophy. But if it is a pilgrimage, a
battle, or a heroic adventure, we had better put
away the thought of compensation altogether.

The saints are sometimes obviously happy. The
disciples of St. Francis of Assisi were so uproariously
cheerful that they could not help shouting with
laughter in church, and their hilarity had to be
curbed by a severe whipping for each offence. But
some very good people have had sad and suffering
lives ; and we shall not understand Christianity
unless we realise that whereas most other religions
and philosophies promise to make a man invul-
nerable, Christianity does not. If we wantyte"be
invulnerable, a hard heart and a good digestion will
do more for us than the Christian virtues.

He who has decided to follow the Crucified must
keep nothing back, and as long as he debates
within himself whether he has made a good bargain
he will either conclude that he has made a bad one
or, as so many do, he will secretly keep an account
open with the world, the flesh, and the devil, so
that whatever happens he may have something to
fall back upon.

There is, however, no reason why we should not

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^ ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

ask who are the happiest people, provided we
remember that from the highest point of view it is
not a supremely important question. The question
may resolve itself into “ What are the things which
I should choose if a fairy godmother gave me three
wishes ? ” Solomon asked for wisdom, which
means, I suppose, a knowledge of the relative values
of things. Having got this, he showed his wisdom
by asking for nothing more. It is quite possible
that if we made the same choice as Solomon we
should let the fairy godmother’s second and third
wishes go.

The Greeks characteristically arranged the good
things of life as follows : l, health ; 2, good looks ;
3, wealth honestly come by , 4, to be young among
one’s fiiends. The Greeks, like Samuel Butler, were
not ashamed to admit that a good income is very
desirable. At the beginning of Plato’s Republic the
aged Cephalus says that he is glad to be well off,
because it is so much easier for a rich man to enter
into the Kingdom of Heaven. Tennyson’s Northern
Farmer was of the same opinion.

The question has been discussed once more by
Professor Urwick, of Toronto, in his new book
called “ The Social Good,” which I cordially
recommend. He thinks that the elements which
are normally necessary to happiness are these : —

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3^ EPICURUS AND HIS CRITICS ^

1. Work: if possible, congenial work, but in
any case work.

2. Strong interests and opportunity to develop
them.

3. The companionship of people whom we like,
and who like us.

4. An ideal to live for in ourselves, if not outside
also.

5. Immunity from severe physical hindrances,
as well as from great care or anxiety.

He adds — what I believe to be profoundly true,
and much needed at the present time — that “ the
true harmony, both for society and for the in-
dividual,' is not a harmony of satisfied impulses,
but a harmony of conscious purposes.” If there is
to be no real “ suppression ” of some natural
impulses, “ the moral teaching of all our masters
has been utterly false.” Professor Urwick will
have nothing tcxsay either to Epicurus or to Freud.
He assumes that we cannot really be happy unless’
we are masters of ourselves, living with a conscious
purpose.

He boldly puts work first of all ; the curse pro-
nounced on Adam is our chiefest blessing. Work is
a good thing in itself, and would be recognised as
such if the conception of work had not been
“distorted by the fallacies of an economic age,”

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ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATION'S ^

which treat it merely as an instrument for the
production of wages or profits. Strong interests are
just what the Anglo-Saxon lacks ; we waste our
leisure with the help of various “ aids to mental
indolence.” As for our ideal, “ it must never be
quite attainable.” The man who has got all that
he aimed at is not to be commended.

I like Professor Urwick’s five good things ; but
it would be useless to put such a programme before
the born Epicurean, for whom I have owned to a
sneaking affection.

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31. STOLEN EPIGRAMS

W HAT is originality ? Undetected plagiarism.

This is probably itself a plagiarism,
but I cannot remember who said it before
me. If originality means thinking for oneself,
and not thinking differently from other people,
a man does not forfeit his claim to it by saying
things which have occurred to others. In fact,
when we consider the millions of people have
been thinking, talking and writing for thousands of
years, it is not likely that anyone should hit upon
anything entirely fresh, unless he is inspired to'
utter something either transcendently wise or most
abnormally foolish. Still, some writers have, or
deserve to have, a special reputation as pickers up
of unconsidered trifles ; they rival the noble-
minded Autolycus, who, according to Homer,
excelled all other men in thieving and the use of
the oath.

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“ What has thou that thou didst not receive ? ”
asks St. Paul. It is a good corrective of vanity to
reflect how completely we are the children of our
age, and how most of the giants in each generation
are men of moderate size, standing on the shoulders
of those who have lived before them. Nine-tenths
of what we call progress is simply the accumulation
of tradition — recorded trials and errors, and a few
lucky shots.

When we talk of literary plagiarisms we think,
not of whole systems of thought, which may be
lifted with impunity, but of neat savings, preserved
for their wit and wisdom. It is tempting to intro-
duce one or two of these to brighten our own
arguments, without spoiling the sentence by the
chilling parenthesis, “ as So-and-so said.” An
excess of honesty, expressing itself between brackets
or in footnotes, makes Jack a dull boy.

I have collected a good many Of these appro-
priations, some of which may be mere coincidences.
My first class will be of notable sayings, which are
constantly quoted with the names of their supposed
authors, but which there is no reason to suppose
were uttered by their supposed authors at all.
These are not strictly plagiarisms, but they illus-
trate the love of quoting epigrams without verifying
them.

STOLEN EPIGRAMS

Plato never Said, “ God geometrises.” William of
Ockham (I think) never said, “ Ultimates ( entia )
are not to be multiplied unnecessarily.” Numenius
is not likely to have called Plato “ an Attic Moses.”
•Julian can hardly have said on his deathbed, “ Thou
has conquered, O Galilean ! ” Even that gallant
but not very intelligent pedant must have realised
that the so-called conversion of Rome in the fourth
century was a victory of the Catholic Church over
the Empire, not at all a victory of “ the Galilean ”
over the forces which brought Him to the Cross.
‘Kosciusko did not say, “The end of Poland.”
The Baron de Cambronne did not say at Waterloo,
“ The Guard dies, but does not surrender.” Cam-
bronne himself, twenty years later, disavowed the
saying, and added with great honesty, “ In the
first place, we did not die, and in the second place,
we did surrender.” This did not prevent the town
of Nantes from %ngraving the words on the base
of his statue. And did Wellington say, “ Up,
Guards, and at them ? ” It seems more than
doubtful. Louis XlV w r as not heard to say,
“ L’etat, c’est moi ” ; though there is no doubt that
he thought so.

Lastly, Galileo probably did not say, “ And yet it
moves ” — of the earth ; but it does not diminish
his achievement that he was anticipated in his

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discovery by Aristarchus and, according to Theo-
phrastus, by Plato in his old age. Leonardo, who
anticipated many discoveries, wrote in large letters
in his diary : “ II sole non si muove.”

Several famous savings in our great poets ha\
been traced back to the Greek and Roman classics.
Chuxton Collins collected a long list of parallels
between Shakespeare and Greek tragedy. Either
Shakespeare was better read than is usually sup-
posed, or “great wits jump” with singular fre-
quency. But this question cannot be discussed
without quoting the Greek texts.

In Macbeth, “ Canst thou not minister to a mind
diseased,” can hardly be independent of Seneca’s,
“ Nemo polluto queat animo mederi.” Ben Jon-
son’s famous song, “ Drink to me only with thine
eyes,” is a paraphrase of Philostratus. Milton on
Fame — ■“ that last infirmity of noble minds ” —
borrows a fine sentiment from 1 Tacitus {Histories
iv 6). The well-known “ I do not like you, Doctor
Fell,” is from Martial. “ Non amo te, Sabidi, nec
possum dicere quare ; Hoc tantum possum dicere,
non amo te.” Dryden’s “ Great wits are sure to
madness near allied,” is from Aristotle through
Seneca. It is by no means always true. A
very close parallel between Burns and Claudian
must be a mere coincidence, since Burns was not a

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STOLEN EPIGRAMS

Latin scholar^ “ O poortith cauld and restless love,
ye wreck my peace between ye. Yet poortith a’
I could forgive, An ’twere not for my Jeanie.”
Claudian has, “ Paupertas me saeva domat, dirus-
que Cupido. Sed toleranda fames, non tolerandus
amor.”

By a curious fatality, nearly all the pet quota-
tions from Latin betray their spuriousness by con-
taining some solecism. A typical example is.
“ Quem Deus vult perdere, prius dementat.” The
nearest original is a line of Publius Syrus, “ Stultum
facit Fortuna quem vult perdere.” “ Dementat ”
is not a classical word. Syrus is also responsible for
“ a beautiful face is a mute recommendation,”
which Schopenhauer “ conveyed.”

Who first said, “ It is worse than a crime ; it is
a blunder ” ? Two of the greatest rascals in history
must fight for it — Talleyrand, to whom it is usually
attributed, andJFouche, who claimed it. These
two men, according to Emil Ludwig, betrayed and
ruined Napoleon, who knew their treachery, but
could not do without 'them.

Who first said, “ The sun never sets upon our
Empire ” ? It seems to have been first used of the
immense Empire of*Spain, and Napoleon, when he
proposed to “ unite Spain for ever to the destinies
of France,” quoted the proverb of Spain. A

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Frenchman, after some years 5 residence in England,
said that as applied to the centre of the British
Empire, “ the expression is of course purely
metaphorical ”

Another of Napoleon’s annexations is the saying
that there is only one step from the sublime to the
ridiculous It seems to occur first in Marmontel,
and then in the notorious Tom Paine, the English-
man, from whom Bonaparte probably got it He
kept on repeating it during the retreat from Moscow,
of which his unlucky Grand Army probably failed
to sec the comic side.

An epigram which has had a queer history is :
u No one is a hero to his valet de chambi e.” Several
French writers, including Montaigne, arc quoted
as having said something like it. But the epigram
is possibly improved when we add : u This, however,
is not because the hero is not a heio, but because
the valet is a valet.” In this iorm it was first

T

written by Hegel (in his Philosophic des Geschichte ,
p. 40). Goethe borrowed it from Hegel, Carlyle
from Goethe, and Disraeli, a great collectoi of
other men’s good things, from Carlyle. The
epigram is, however, equally unfair to heroes and
to valets.

A few miscellaneous plagiarisms may be added.
Gray’s “ E’en in our ashes live theii wonted fires,”

283

comes from Chaucer. "‘Yet in our ashen cold is
fire yreken.” ^ “ The cup that cheers but not
inebriates,” is used by Cowper of tea. But it
comes from Bishop Berkeley, who uses it of tar-
water, which “ is of a nature so mild and benign
and proportioned to the human constitution, as to
warm without heating, to cheer but not inebriate ”
This is from the Sms, a treatise which is divided
between the sovereign merits of tar-water and
those of the Neoplatonic philosophy. I agree with
the latter ; tar-water I have never tried.

“ He who fights and runs away may live to fight
another dav,” which we know as Goldsmith’s, is
from ancient Greece, and “ we have given hostages
to fortune ” is from Lucan : “ Dedimus tot pignora
fatis.”

It looks as if an industrious investigator might
hunt down all our good things, and dispute our
rights in them. But there is an almost unexplored
field for judicious annexation in the proverbs of
China. A few specimens will show how useful they
may be. “ Do not remove a fly from your friend’s
forehead with a hatchet.” “ No needle is sharp at
both ends.” “ Free sitters grumble most at a
play.” “ You cani: clap hands with one palm.”
“ A maker of idols is never an idolater.” “ He who
rides on a tiger can never dismount ” (a warning to

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)g- ASSESSMENTS AND ANTICIPATIONS ^

revolutionists). “One dog barks a^t something,
the rest baik at him.” “ When a neighbour is in
your fruit garden, inattention is the truest polite-
ness.” “ Evei) one pushes a falling fence ”

Pnntid m Cheat Britain by Ebenezer Bayhs <S Son, Ltd , The Trinity Pie s*»
U r 20,129